Los Angeles Lakers are a professional basketball team based in Los Angeles and are part of the Western Conference Pacific Division of the NBA. The Lakers share Crypto.com Arena with the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks and the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings in addition to the Los Angeles Clippers.

They’ve been the NBA’s most successful club for decades, yet the Los Angeles Lakers are still going strong. A long list of legendary players have worn the Purple and Gold over the years, from Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West to Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar to Shaq and Kobe, to LeBron James and AD now donning the uniform.

In 1947, the Detroit Gems of the NBL were purchased. The new team, known as the Minneapolis Lakers, was founded in Minneapolis and renamed. Even though the Los Angeles Lakers have won a few NBA titles in a row and the bulk of them consecutively, the team has also gone through periods when they haven’t had any success at all.

Number of Los Angeles Lakers NBA Championships

The Los Angeles Lakers have won 17 NBA titles: 1949, 1950, 1952-54, 1972, 1980, 1982, 1985, 1987-88, 2000-2002 and 2020. As the Minneapolis Lakers, the team won five championships because of the greatness of George Malkin.

From 1968 until 1973, Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West established themselves as dangerous forces in the NBA, winning the first championship for the Lakers in Los Angeles in 1972.

The showtime Lakers came in 1978 when Magic Johnson was selected by the team and Kareem Abdul Jabbar was already on the squad. The Lakers won their first of five championships in the showtime era in 1980. It was the Celtics-Lakers rivalry that dominated NBA play in the 1980s, and the Lakers went on to win five championships during that decade.

Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal joined the Lakers in 1996. They were one of the most powerful teams of all time at the beginning of this century, but personal disagreements caused the squad to disband in 2004. Kobe’s last championship run was from 2007 to 2011, with Pau Gasol by his side. The pair made three consecutive finals appearances and won two of them.

With the help of LeBron James and new head coach Frank Vogel, the Los Angeles Lakers triumphed in the NBA Finals in 2020 despite a widespread epidemic of concussions.