My Favorite NBA Team – The Los Angeles Lakers

Scroll below and enjoy

presents a

My Favorite
NBA Team

It’s SHOWTIME!!!

First off… AHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! (pick’s himself off of floor). Wow… Lebron James signing with the Lakers is a true BOSS move for both parties involved and I wish the King a very fond welcome to the “land of gold”. The Los Angeles Lakers have been my favorite basketball team my whole life and I’m not ashamed to admit that they have spoiled me greatly over the years, winning a treasure room full of NBA championships  and sporting an alumni of Hall of Fame players  that is unmatched across the league.

My earliest memories of the purple and gold were in the late 80’s during the Magic Johnson era with Showtime basketball. While I wasn’t around yet to enjoy all of the success in this great run (born in 83), the shockwaves of awesomeness were still reverberating during the time that I started to become a fan and this era was still extremely fun and super accessible. After Magic retired (early unfortunately due to HIV), the Lakers went through a rough patch in the 90’s as Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls became the team of the decade but I knew that it was only a matter of time until the Lakers were going to climb back up to the top of the NBA mountain.

As I first started to come into comprehension, players like Vlade Divac and Nick Van Exel were the leaders of a young and overachieving team who made playoff runs but did not look like a legitimate title contender. Times were tough as the Lakers were in a perpetual cycle of mediocrity, not bad enough to obtain a high draft pick to help improve the team but also not good enough to compete for a championship with their current roster. Then, in 1996, everything changed with one of the most shocking and headline grabbing personnel moves that started the building of a title contender and changed the way I looked at my beloved Lakers forever. I can still remember how I reacted that day… I was shocked to discover after turning on ESPN that Shaquille O’Neal , the world’s most dominant center and my favorite player of all time, had surprisingly left a good situation in Orlando to move out west and join the Los Angeles Lakers !!!

WOW!!! I was more than flabbergasted! I really didn’t even know this was a possibility at the time and my brain exploded with all the potential scenarios of this bright new future led by the Diesel. Even without any other stars being with him right away, I was extremely confident about our title chances with just the one addition and could not wait for the season to start. Little did I know that Mr. Kobe Bryant would turn into such a stud and also Phil Jackson , 6x NBA championship playcaller and mastermind of the triangle offense, would later decide to take the helm as head coach. Holy crap what a team!

It took a few years for all of this to develop but the gelling came together in the 1999-2000 season as the Lakers looked poised to finally return to their championship glory. Still ranking as my personal favorite season ever, the Los Angeles Lakers and their unstoppable 1-2 punch, overseen by the genius of the triangle, were challenged that year by the incredibly deep Portland Trail Blazers, a new type of hybrid squad that played very unselfishly and could bring significant pressure from every single player on their roster. I still remember the cast of characters on both sides very fondly. The Lakers had the most dynamic inside-out duo of all time with Shaq & Kobe, the aforementioned greatest coach ever in Phil Jackson and a perfectly balanced platoon of complimentary stars and role players such as 3-point ace Glen Rice , the point-guard pit-bull Derek Fisher , the versatile and clutch Robert Horry and the always reliable Rick Fox who all bought into the system beautifully.

Meanwhile, the Portland Trail Blazers were coming off of a run to the Western Conference Finals in the previous season and built up an impressively awesome roster that felt like I was playing NBA Live 98 and trading a bunch of my favorite players onto one team. Wow, what a fun and super deep squad they had – They traded for Scottie Pippen the best 2-way player in the game at the time in the offseason, Rasheed Wallace was an unguardable and enigmatic new-age power forward who could post-up effectively as well as hit 3’s, Arvydas Sabonis was a huge and skillful center who was more like a point guard in a 7′ 3″ body passing the ball like a dream as well as hitting outside shots all while taking up space in the middle, a speed demon and paint penetrating point guard in Damon Stoudamire  who always created match-up problems against opposing defenders, plus many more fantastic players. Additional assets to this outstandingly deep team include the sharpshooting Steve Smith , the tough-as-nails Brian Grant , the aggressive and ‘tude-filled Bonzi Wells , the talented and post-centric Jermaine O’Neal and the “can score from anywhere on the court” Detlef Schrempf  all corralled in by the intelligent and well-liked Mike Dunleavy . I can still remember gulping when after I made all of these transactions in NBA Live 98, they rated #1 in every single category which was the first time I had ever encountered that and I still see them as the best 1-13 lineup that I have ever seen, mixing tough urban players with hard working European fundamentalists. 

Throughout the year, LA & Portland played each other 4 times with both teams (of course) winning 2 games apiece. After battling their way through a long regular season, the Lakers and Trail Blazers finished the year with the two best records in the league and seemed destined for a head-on collision between each other with the NBA championship probably going to whoever could win the clash between these two Western Conference titans. Even though the Blazers roster was daunting… I remember not being too intimidated as my confidence in the Lakers was truly the highest it had ever been in any of my favorite teams since I started watching sports.

After an impressive playoff run by both teams, the matchup everyone wanted to see was going to happen as the Lakers and Trail Blazers prepared for a classic Western Conference Finals clash. I was so geeked for this showdown and got more fully engaged into this sporting event than I think I had ever been in my life which helped catapult my love of sports tenfold. After a super tough and thrilling 6 games, the series came down to a decisive game 7… and I’ll never forget realizing that the feelings that I had been put through the whole season, which had culminated down to this one game, had proven to myself that I was completely emotionally entangled now and I would be crushed if the Lakers somehow lost! There was no turning back… Portland had to go DOWN!

I recalled feeling like a switch had flipped when game 7 started… as if the Lakers wore impenetrable armor into a medieval battle! After the tip, I was shocked at what had unfolded through the first 3 quarters… Portland was dominating the game and entered the 4th quarter with a double digit lead ! How could this happen? The Lakers had a propensity to play sloppy at intervals but this was definitely not the time for that as the Blazers took advantage and played like a team hungry for the championship.

Negative thoughts rushed through my head during that intermission leading into the 4th. Would it really be Portland vs. Indiana in the NBA Finals? Would the Lakers be able to rebound from this next year? Did Shaq really have some kind of playoff curse? How could we really be in this position since our team feels so perfectly constructed!?… Man, that was a really long block of commercials.

As the final quarter started I was hopeful that the Lakers could somehow get some momentum and climb back into this game… and climb like a Mountain Lion they did. Basketball is a game of runs and the 4th quarter I saw from this great team became a thing of legends as Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal displayed a killer instinct and a will-to-win that was sooo freakin’ beautiful to watch. After a methodical approach that saw them slowly eat into Portlands lead, the Lakers completed the comeback late in the 4th and I’ll never forget coming unglued out of my chair after this play !!! HOLY CRAP WE’RE GOING TO THE FINALS!!! 

After conquering their toughest opponent all season in the Trail Blazers, the Lakers went on to complete the perfect season by defeating Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers to win their first NBA championship since the Magic Johnson days , ushering in the new millennium as the next great NBA powerhouse. WOW… they had really done it and the thoughts at that time were so exciting of thinking of how long this dynasty could last! Thank you so much Lakers for giving me this great season as I was there for every game and felt the single greatest amount of gratification for being a fan of any sports team during this year.

They didn’t stop there and continued to spoil me with 2 more championships in a row (to complete an amazing 3-peat) over Philadelphia and New Jersey while also supplying me with some of the most cardiac arrest inducing buzzer beaters of all time such as Robert Horry’s miraculous shot in game 4 of the 2001-2002 Western Conference Finals and also Derek Fisher’s amazing 0.04 game winner against the San Antonio Spurs  in game 5 of the 2003-2004 Western Conference Semifinals. They even won back-to-back championships in 2009 and 2010, the latter being extra sweet as it came at the hands of our most hated rival, the Boston Celtics .

Yeah… the Lakers sure haven’t let me down in my lifetime and I can also check old film to see more glory days of how my boys shredded up the league in the past , adding yet even more fuel to the Laker fire that burns deep within my soul. Man, its been a great ride and I hope it continues on for the rest of my life as the Laker machine doesn’t look like it has any intentions of slowing down any time soon. For me, after all the titles, great players and astounding history that adorn this legendary top-tier NBA franchise, my favorite memory will still always be that magical 1999-2000 season where the team had not only completed the season perfectly by winning the championship but it was my first ever offseason of experiencing an absolute “sky’s the limit” feel that instilled a pride and satisfaction with my team that I had never experienced yet as an adult. Thank you Los Angeles Lakers for providing my fanhood with tons of awesome times over the years. You will forever be my favorite NBA team.

Thanks for reading! Questions/Remarks/Suggestions?
Leave below in the comments section or…

E-Mail The ‘Tude Dude
radwriting@thetudedude.com

Follow The ‘Tude Dude

-Pushing Reviews to the EDGE!

Published by