The Los Angeles Lakers franchise has a long and storied history, having played and won championships in both the National Basketball League (NBL) and the Basketball Association of America (BAA) prior to the 1949 merger which formed the National Basketball Association (NBA). The franchise traces its roots to the NBL's Detroit Gems which was launched in 1946 and relocated to Minneapolis in 1947 to become the Lakers.
The Lakers are one of the NBA's most famous and successful franchises. As of August 2024, the Lakers are second in the NBA's all-time records for wins (3,550) and winning percentage (.591), and hold the all-time record for most NBA Finals appearances (32). They are second in NBA championship wins with 17, just behind the Boston Celtics with 18 NBA titles, and with nine more Finals appearances than the Celtics, their biggest rival. Their team has had many NBA legends, including George Mikan, Jim Pollard, Clyde Lovellette, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Gail Goodrich, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Jamaal Wilkes, James Worthy, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, LeBron James, and Anthony Davis.LAKERS: Los Angeles Lakers History
1946–1958: Detroit beginnings and Minneapolis dynasty
The franchise was founded in 1946 as the Detroit Gems, led by founder/owner C. King Boring and his business partner Maurice Winston, and played in the National Basketball League (NBL) during the 1946–47 season where it finished last in the league with only 4 wins in 44 games. Though the team was scheduled to continue in the NBL the following season, its ownership, faced with high losses due to low attendance and lack of homecourt, decided on selling the team to Ben Berger and Morris Chalfen of Minnesota for $15,000 in June 1947. Minneapolis sportswriter Sid Hartman played a key behind-the-scenes role in helping put together the deal and later the team,Lazenby, p. 19. including helping them hire John Kundla from College of St. Thomas, to be their first head coach, by meeting with him and selling him on the team.Lazenby, p. 18.
Berger and Chalfen relocated the team to Minneapolis, with home games being played at both the Minneapolis Auditorium and the Minneapolis Armory. The franchise was re-christened the "Lakers" in reference to Minnesota's nickname, "The Land of 10,000 Lakes". Berger and Chalfen brought in Max Winter, later to become a founder and owner of the National Football League's Minnesota Vikings, to be the Lakers' new general manager. Winter also took an ownership stake in the team, which he would maintain until he left the Lakers in 1955.
The acquisition of the franchise left the team with no players of value and the former ownership had sold away the few players it drafted in the 1947 NBL draft before the sale. As the Gems had recorded by far the worst record in the NBL, the Lakers had the first pick in the 1947 Professional Basketball League of America dispersal draft, which they used to select George Mikan, later to become one of the greatest centers of his time. With Mikan, new coach Kundla and an infusion of former University of Minnesota players to replace those lost prior to the relocation, the Lakers won the NBL championship in their first season. A week prior to the NBL finals, the Lakers won the annual World Professional Basketball Tournament, where Mikan was named MVP after scoring a tournament-record 40 points against the New York Renaissance in the title-clinching game.
The following season, the Lakers switched to the 12-team Basketball Association of America (BAA) and proceeded to win the championship in that season. The next year saw the merging of the NBL and the BAA to form the National Basketball Association, and the Lakers won the inaugural NBA championship on the backs of Mikan, Vern Mikkelsen, and future National Football League coach Bud Grant.
The Lakers' three-year streak of championships came to an end in 1951, when they lost to the Rochester Royals in the NBA Western Division Finals. Nevertheless, they rebounded from that defeat to capture the title for the next three consecutive years, thus becoming the NBA's first "dynasty", having won six NBL/BAA/NBA championships in seven years. In addition to Mikan and Mikkelsen, the Lakers teams of these years also featured future Hall of Famers Jim Pollard, Slater Martin, and Clyde Lovellette. During this time, the team also participated in the lowest-scoring game in NBA history; on November 22, 1950, the Lakers fell to the Fort Wayne Pistons by a score of 19–18. This contest later proved to be a factor in the league's introduction of the shot clock.
Three days before the start of the 1954–55 season training camp in September 1954, Mikan unexpectedly announced his retirement from basketball. Without him, Lovellette led the Lakers in scoring and to the Western Division finals where the team lost 3–1 to the Fort Wayne Pistons. After stumbling to a 14–21 record to start the 1955–56 season, Mikan was persuaded to come out of retirement in January 1956 for the second half of the season to backup Lovellette. With Mikan, the Lakers made the playoffs but lost to the St. Louis Hawks in the Western Division semifinals.
After Mikan's second retirement, attendance at Lakers games dropped off sharply. On February 23, 1957, the team was nearly sold to St. Louis businessman, Milton Fischmann and former Chicago White Sox manager, Marty Marion for $150,000, before Minneapolis Star and Tribune executive sports editor, Charles O. Johnson, stepped in to plea the owners to give local interests a chance. They gave in to Johnson's demands, and set a deadline for March 5, before they would transfer the sale over to Fischmann and Marion. Berger and Chalfen would extend the deadline to March 13, two days later. On that day, a local group helmed by businessman Bob Short successfully matched and exceeded the asking price, to purchase and keep the team in Minneapolis for $200,000, after coming up $11,000 short with two days remaining. The league would approve the sale on April 5, before the stocks officially transferred to the new owners four days later. The new ownership was unable to cure the team's financial ills, however.
The Lakers found their way back to the playoffs in 1957 when they lost to the Hawks once more. The following year was disastrous, however, as Mikan became head coach before realizing he was not suited to the task. After compiling a 9–30 record, he stepped aside in favor of Kundla, but the Lakers found themselves last in the league that year with a 19–53 record.
1958–1968: Baylor and West duo – Move to Los Angeles and Celtics rivalry
Last place, however, meant the first pick in the draft, and the Lakers chose wisely, picking Elgin Baylor, who went on to win the NBA Rookie of the Year Award after averaging 24.9 points per game and 15.0 rebounds per game. In 1959, Baylor and Mikkelsen were able to lead the team past their recent nemesis, the Hawks, and into the Finals, where they fell to the then-emerging Boston Celtics in the first four-game sweep in NBA Finals history. This marked the start of the long rivalry between the two teams. 1960 saw the Lakers start poorly, but they managed to make the playoffs with a meager 25–50 record. They were defeated again, however, by the Hawks.
In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers of Major League Baseball moved to Los Angeles and quickly became a huge financial success. Short did not fail to notice this. After considering moves to Chicago and San Francisco, he decided to move the franchise to Los Angeles before the 1960–61 season, making the Lakers the NBA's first West Coast team. The Lakers did not change their name after this second move, despite the general scarcity of natural lakes in southern California. Minneapolis, meanwhile, would remain without an NBA franchise until the debut of the Minnesota Timberwolves in 1989.
Besides the relocation to Los Angeles, a second big change to the team was the addition of point guard Jerry West. A third was the hiring of West's college coach Fred Schaus to helm the team, and a fourth was the post-season addition of Francis Dayle "Chick" Hearn as the Lakers' play-by-play announcer. Hearn would go on to hold that post for the next 41 years.
The new Los Angeles Lakers, behind Baylor's 34.8 points per game and 19.8 rebounds per game, improved on the previous year's results before losing once more to the Hawks in the Western Conference Finals. The duo of Baylor and West proved to be lethal and they both finished among the NBA's top 10 scorers for the next four years. Baylor was called to active military duty during the 1961–62 season following the Berlin crisis and was only available on weekends. Nevertheless, Baylor and West went on to average 38.3 and 30.8 points per game respectively during the regular season. The Lakers were able to pull together and make the NBA Finals, only to lose heartbreakingly to a now dominant Celtics team. Baylor set a record for most points scored in a playoff game with 61, which stood for 25 years and is still an NBA Finals and regulation game record. The Celtics defeated the Lakers twice more in the Finals over the next three years.
September 1965 saw another team upheaval when Short sold the team to Canadian-American entrepreneur Jack Kent Cooke for $5 million. Also, rookie Gail Goodrich joined the team.
On November 20 of that year, the Lakers played the San Francisco Warriors in Las Vegas. The game was notable because Chick Hearn was not present to announce it. He had gone to Fayetteville, Arkansas to announce a college football game, and inclement weather had prevented his flight from being able to leave in time for him to make it to Las Vegas for the Lakers game. It was only the second game he had missed for the Lakers since starting with the team in 1961. It was also the last game he would miss for the next 36 years. Beginning on November 21, 1965, Hearn announced the next 3,338 consecutive Laker regular season and playoff games. As for the team that season, the Lakers would find themselves in the Finals once again in 1966, promptly losing to the Celtics once again.
The Lakers moved to Cooke's brand-new arena, The Forum, in 1967 with new coach Bill van Breda Kolff. That year saw the team repeat its now-bitter pattern, losing to the Celtics in the 1968 NBA Finals.
1968–1975: The Baylor/West/Chamberlain trio
It had become clear that the Lakers needed to counter the great Celtics center, Bill Russell. Thus Cooke obtained Wilt Chamberlain from the Philadelphia 76ers, hoping to supplement the aging and ailing Baylor. The move seemed at first to have worked, as the 1969 Lakers proceeded to compile a better record than the Celtics behind Chamberlain's league-leading 21.1 rebounds per game. The two clubs met once again in the NBA Finals, but for the first time, the Lakers had the advantage as they were clearly considered the better team entering the series by most observers. However, they once again failed to top their rivals and the Celtics emerged from the series as victorious yet again, winning their 11th NBA Championship in 13 seasons. That 1969 championship series is also notable in that Jerry West was named the first-ever Finals MVP; this remains the only time a member of the losing team has won the award.
1970 saw Jerry West win the NBA scoring title at 31.2 points per game, and the Lakers returned to the Finals where, for the first time since moving to Los Angeles, they did not have to face the Celtics. This time it was the New York Knicks, a team that included future Lakers coach Phil Jackson. West made a memorable 60-foot shot as the fourth-quarter buzzer sounded in Game 3, forcing that game into overtime and helping West earn the nickname "Mr. Clutch". However, the Knicks recovered from what might have seemed a crushing blow and took the game in overtime.