The Lakers–Suns rivalry is a National Basketball Association (NBA) rivalry between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Phoenix Suns. The rivalry began as early as the 1969–70 season when the Lakers and Suns met against each other in the first round of the 1970 NBA playoffs, with peaks being had throughout the 1980s, early 1990s, and 2000s. While the Lakers won every playoff series from their 3–1 series comeback in 1970 until 1989, the Suns have won the vast majority of playoff series matchups since 1990, winning 5 of the last 7 playoffs series since then, including a reverse series sweep against the Lakers in 1993 and a 3–1 comeback of their own in 2006. While the rivalry cooled off during the 2010s due to poor teams and management by both squads throughout that decade, renewed interest in the rivalry sparked into the 2020s. With 13 head-to-head playoff meetings, this is the most frequently played playoff matchup in the history of the Western Conference.
Background The Lakers were founded in 1947 for the National Basketball League (a predecessor of the NBA) after the Detroit Gems folded their organization and sold off their assets (which mainly consisted of equipment at the time) to Bob Berger and Morris Chalfen to create the Minneapolis Lakers in Minneapolis, Minnesota (Minnesota's nickname is "The Land of 10,000 Lakes"). Under their first few seasons of existence, the Lakers saw immediate success as a franchise, winning an NBL championship, a WPBT championship, a BAA championship, and four NBA championships (including the first championship under the NBA name while under the Central Division and a three-peat from 1952 to 1954 under the Western Division) during six of their seven years in Minneapolis, primarily winning with center George Mikan being on their team. The combination of championships made the Lakers arguably the first dynasty in professional basketball history. However, a combination of less than stellar results after Mikan's multiple departures from the team, poor attendance, and a look at how the Brooklyn Dodgers successfully transitioned into the Los Angeles Dodgers led to the Lakers moving from Minneapolis to Los Angeles in 1960, keeping the team name despite a lack of natural lakes in the area. By the end of the 1960s, the Lakers created arguably one of the first superteams in the NBA with Wilt Chamberlain joining a roster that also included star players Elgin Baylor and Jerry West.
The Suns, meanwhile, were founded in the NBA in 1968 alongside the Milwaukee Bucks as one of two expansion teams that year. The Phoenix team was named the Suns above over 28,000 possible options that were listed in their "name the team" contest due to the city of Phoenix, Arizona's nickname of "Valley of the Sun". Incidentally, there was originally a semi-pro football team in the Western Professional Football League that was also named the Phoenix Suns before the NBA team existed, though the owner of that team would later settle with the NBA team out of court, according to a 1981 report from The Arizona Republic. During the 1968 NBA expansion draft, the Suns selected Gail Goodrich, John Wetzel, and Dennis Hamilton from the Lakers in the expansion draft, though only Goodrich and Wetzel ultimately played for the Suns. The Suns also acquired a Lakers draft pick in 1968 named Eddie Biedenbach during free agency. By contrast, the Suns tied with the Bucks for the worst record of their inaugural season with a 16–66 record, with the Lakers winning their first six straight games against the Suns that season. In the following season, the Suns lost a coin flip to acquire Lew Alcindor (later named Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) in the 1969 NBA draft (which is considered a key point where fans considered there to be a curse on the franchiseWhat happened to the coin that determined the fate of the Milwaukee Bucks and Phoenix Suns in 1969?), though they did acquire forward Connie Hawkins in free agency to help improve their fortunes a bit early on. In addition to the geographical location similarities, the rivalry between the Suns and the Lakers has been a key point for Arizona-based professional sports teams to have heated rivalries against other Los Angeles-based professional sports teams throughout the years.
Early history (1968–1989) While the Phoenix Suns first began their existence in 1968, their rivalry with the Lakers truly began as early as the 1969–1970 season after the Suns got their first regular season win against the Lakers on November 7, 1969. During that season, the Suns won their regular season against the Lakers 4–3 (including an overtime win on February 7, 1970, for their first competitive match to go to overtime). However, they also faced some different struggles during that season, including a point where head coach Johnny Kerr was replaced by general manager Jerry Colangelo exiting 1969 and entering 1970. Despite ending the season with a 39–43 record and barely qualifying as a No. 4 seed for their first playoff appearance in 1970 after losing their tiebreaker to the Chicago Bulls, their opponent in what was known as the Western Division Semi-finals was the No. 2 seeded Lakers, who finished their season at 46–36 in their division that season behind the Atlanta Hawks. After losing the first game in Los Angeles, the Suns managed to surprise the Lakers in the next three games afterward through key performances by Hawkins, Goodrich, and Paul Silas, with a chance to complete the upset the day after finishing Game 4. However, both Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West ramped up their quality of play throughout the rest of the series and completed the second ever 3–1 series comeback in NBA history (with the first 3–1 series comeback happening in 1968 by the Boston Celtics against the Philadelphia 76ers). After the Lakers lost the 1970 NBA Finals to the New York Knicks, the Western Division turned into the Western Conference due to greater expansion in the NBA, with the Lakers joining the Pacific Division since then and the Suns briefly joining the Midwest Division before joining the Lakers in the Pacific Division as of 1972.
Throughout the rest of the 1970s, the Lakers and Suns would not meet each other in the playoffs. However, both of them were able to have competitive success during the decade, with the Lakers winning the 1972 NBA Finals in a rematch against the Knicks while holding what was considered at the time to be the best record ever at 69–13 and the Suns reaching the 1976 NBA Finals as unexpected underdogs against the Boston Celtics with a more pedestrian 42–40 record. They would also have varying failures involved under what can be considered as the biggest time of parity in NBA history, with the Suns not returning to the playoffs until 1976 through coach John MacLeod (with the 1971–72 Suns notably having the best record to not make it to the playoffs at 49–33) and the Lakers failing to make it to the playoffs during the mid-1970s, even during the season they acquired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar from the Bucks. Both the Lakers and Suns also had competitive games against each other during that decade despite not meeting each other in the playoffs after 1970. The end of the 1970s decade for the Lakers is most notable for two important moments: the selling of the Lakers from Jack Kent Cooke to Jerry Buss and the acquisition of the 1979 NBA draft's No. 1 pick, Magic Johnson.
The 1980s decade is most notable for it being the era of the Showtime Lakers, which was primarily led by Magic and Kareem on offense and Michael Cooper on the defensive end. With those three players being their primary players that stayed throughout the most important years of the decade alongside other important players that joined them throughout the decade (including another No. 1 pick in James Worthy), the Lakers both won 5 NBA Finals championships throughout that decade (one of them being coached by Paul Westhead after letting go of coach Jack McKinney due to a near-fatal head injury and the rest being coached by former player Pat Riley after firing Westhead) and were the most dominant Western Conference team of the 1980s decade. It was also the most consistent time that both teams met against each other in the playoffs, as the Suns met the Lakers four out of six times throughout the early 1980s due to acquisitions of players like Walter Davis, Truck Robinson, Dennis Johnson, and Larry Nance early on in that period of time. However, regardless of which round the Suns played the Lakers in, the Lakers would always dominate the Suns during that period, with the 1984 Western Conference Finals being the only time the Suns got more than one win over the Lakers in that decade. The late 1980s were one of the worst periods for the Suns, however, due to not just key players like Paul Westphal and Alvan Adams reaching retirement and coach John MacLeod no longer making a viable difference for the team, but also due to a scandalous period of time where players like Walter Davis, James Edwards, Jay Humphries, and Grant Gondrezick were taking illicit drugs (primarily cocaine) and damaging the team's reputation in the process, which subsequently later led to the sudden death of the young center Nick Vanos at the Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crash. The sudden shift into being one of the worst teams led to the Suns making more bold, daring choices near the end of the decade by not just having general manager Jerry Colangelo become the new owner of the team as well (which helped save the Suns from potentially moving elsewhere and prematurely ending their rivalry by extension), but also led to them making a gutsy trade with Larry Nance, Mike Sanders, and their 1988 first round pick being traded to the Cleveland Cavaliers for Kevin Johnson, Mark West, Tyrone Corbin, and multiple draft picks (one of which became fan favorite Dan Majerle) during the 1987–88 season, as well as fire former player turned coach John Wetzel for a return of Cotton Fitzsimmons coaching them (after previously doing so in the early 1970s) and sign Tom Chambers as the first ever unrestricted free agent during the following season. Those moves led to an immediate payoff for one of the biggest improvements from one season to the next for a franchise, though they still failed to defeat the Lakers in the playoffs by the end of the decade, being swept 4–0 in part due to their inexperience when compared to how the Showtime Lakers performed.
The 1990s and Early 2000s