Did You Know
The '''Los Angeles Lakers''' are a National Basketball Association (NBA) team based in Los Angeles, California. The Lakers play their home games at Staples Center, which they share with their fellow NBA rival, the Los Angeles Clippers, and their sister team, the Los Angeles Sparks of the WNBA.
The Lakers' franchise was founded in 1946 in Detroit, Michigan before moving to Minneapolis, where the team got its official title from the state's nickname, "Land of 10,000 Lakes."["Tracey Reavis. "The Nicknames". ''The Official NBA Encyclopedia'' (3rd Edition). New York: Doubleday, 2000. pg. 95.] The Lakers won five championships before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1960?61 NBA season. The Lakers lost all of their eight appearances in the NBA Finals in the 1960s, despite having help from Elgin Baylor and Jerry West. In 1972, the Lakers won their sixth title under coach Bill Sharman. The Lakers' popularity soared in the 1980s when they won five additional championships during a nine-year span with the leadership of Hall of Famers Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and coach Pat Riley, the franchise's all-time leader in regular season game wins and playoff games coached and wins. Two of those championships during that span were against their arch-rivals, the Boston Celtics. With the help of Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, and Hall of Fame coach Phil Jackson, the Lakers advanced to six of the ten NBA Finals in the 2000s, winning three of them consecutively from 2000 to 2002 and losing in 2004 and in the 2008 NBA Finals. In 2009, they defeated the Orlando Magic four games to one, winning the championship for the 15th time.
The Lakers hold records for having (at the end of the 2008?09 season) the most wins (2,970), the highest winning percentage (61.7%), the most NBA Finals appearances (30), the second fewest non-playoff seasons with five (San Antonio Spurs has four), and the second-most NBA championships with 15, behind the Boston Celtics' 17.
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