About Los Angeles Lakers
Los Angeles Lakers are a professional basketball team based in Los Angeles, California that competes in the National Basketball Association (NBA), which was formerly called the Basketball Association of America (BAA). Since 1999, the Lakers have played their home games at Staples Center. 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. Los Angeles Lakers won five championships before relocating to Los Angeles in the 1960–61 NBA season. Los Angeles Lakers went on to lose 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 compiled a 33-game winning streak, the longest streak in U.S. professional team sports, and won their sixth title under coach Bill Sharman. Los Angeles Lakers' popularity soared in the 1980s when they won five additional championships during a nine-year span with the help of Hall of Famers Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and coach Pat Riley, the franchise's all-time leader in both regular season 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, Los Angeles Lakers played in six of the ten NBA Finals in the 21st century, winning three of them consecutively from 2000 to 2002, and losing the next two in 2004 and 2008, and winning the 2009 NBA Finals; the last two appearances were without O'Neal.
LA Lakers hold records for having (at the end of the 2008–09 NBA season) the most wins (2,970), the highest winning percentage (61.7%), the most NBA Finals appearances (30) of any NBA franchise, second for the least non-playoff seasons with 5 and have the second most NBA championships with 15, behind the Boston Celtics' 17.