LAKERS BY:JOSE TOSTADO

                                                    
The Lakers escalated the NBA. The Minneapolis Lakers' first season was 1947-48, when the team entered the Basketball League. A strange series of events early that year landed the Lakers the biggest prize in the game at that time-center George Mikan.


Mikan was a 6-10 giant of a man who had dominated college basketball in his four years at DePaul. He joined the Chicago American Gears at the end of the 1945-46 season, then led the Gears to the NBL Championship the following year.

Prior to the 1947-48 campaign Maurice White, president of the American Gear Company and owner of the Chicago team, pulled the club out of the NBL. White's plan was to create a 24-team circuit called the Professional Basketball League of America, in which he would own all of the teams and all of the arenas. But the new league lasted barely a month, and the players on White's teams were distributed among the 11 NBL franchises. The first-year Minneapolis Lakers landed Mikan strictly by chance.
The Lakers were a good team even without Mikan. The club featured a fine forward named Jim Pollard and one of the better playmakers in the league in Herm Schaefer. Coaching the squad was John Kundla, who had been hired away from the University of Minnesota. But once the bespectacled Mikan joined the Lakers there was no stopping them.

Minneapolis walked away with the NBL crown that season. After winning the Western Division by 13 games, the team disposed of the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Rochester Royals. Minneapolis lost only two games during the postseason, one in the first round and one in the finals against the Royals. Mikan paced the circuit in scoring during the regular season with 21.3 points per game and was tops in postseason play with an average of 24.4 points per contest.

1986-87: A Very Magic Year


Once again the Lakers made a couple of key offseason moves, letting go of Maurice Lucas, moving A. C. Green into the starting lineup, and picking up Mychal Thompson from San Antonio. Head Coach Pat Riley also made a tactical adjustment in 1986-87 by shifting the offensive focus from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Magic Johnson.
The moves paid off. Johnson won his first career NBA Most Valuable Player Award while leading the Lakers to a 65-17 record, the second-best mark in franchise history. Abdul-Jabbar, now 39 years old, chipped in 17.5 points per game, and Michael Cooper was named NBA Defensive Player of the Year.
The Lakers earned another matchup with the Celtics in the NBA Finals by sweeping Denver, losing just one game to Golden State, and then sweeping Seattle. Los Angeles routed Boston in the first two games of the Finals, and the teams then split the next four contests, giving the Lakers their second championship in three seasons.
Johnson earned the NBA Finals MVP Award to go with his regular-season MVP trophy. At the Lakers' championship celebration in Los Angeles, Coach Riley brashly declared that the Lakers would repeat as NBA champions in 1987-88. It was a bold statement that served to motivate the team throughout the next season.