Chronicles the history of the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team, presenting color photos and highlighting important games, players, and coaches.

"Includes 2010 championship season."--Jacket.

Against the backdrop of the glitz and glamour of Hollywood, California, the Los Angeles Lakers have become not only one of professional basketball's most treasured gems, but an internationally-renowned sports icon. With the wizardry of players who require only one name--Elgin, West, Wilt, Kareem, Magic, Shaq, Kobe--the Lakers grew from a promising Midwestern team starting afresh in the City of Angels and becoming one of the most successful corporate giants in the history of athletic competition. This definitive encyclopedia of the Lakers provides all vital data pertaining to each season of the team's first 50 years in Los Angeles, including biographies of Hall of Famers, other great performers, and coaches; complete rosters; season-by-season schedules and statistics; draft picks; and records and individual accomplishments.

The New York Times bestselling author of Sweetness delivers the first all-encompassing account of the 1980s Los Angeles Lakers, one of professional sports’ most-revered—and dominant—dynasties. The Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s personified the flamboyance and excess of the decade over which they reigned. Beginning with the arrival of Earvin “Magic” Johnson as the number-one overall pick of the 1979 draft, the Lakers played basketball with gusto and pizzazz, unleashing their famed “Showtime” run-and-gun style on a league unprepared for their speed and ferocity—and became the most captivating show in sports and, arguably, in all-around American entertainment. The Lakers’ roster overflowed with exciting all-star-caliber players, including center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and they were led by the incomparable Pat Riley, known for his slicked-back hair, his Armani suits, and his arrogant strut. Hollywood’s biggest celebrities lined the court and gorgeous women flocked to the arena. Best of all, the team was a winner. Between 1980 and 1991, the Lakers played in an unmatched nine NBA championship series, capturing five of them. Bestselling sportswriter Jeff Pearlman draws from almost three hundred interviews to take the first full measure of the Lakers’ epic Showtime era. A dazzling account of one of America’s greatest sports sagas, Showtime is packed with indelible characters, vicious rivalries, and jaw-dropping, behind-the-scenes stories of the players’ decadent Hollywood lifestyles. From the Showtime era’s remarkable rise to its tragic end—marked by Magic Johnson’s 1991 announcement that he had contracted HIV—Showtime is a gripping narrative of sports, celebrity, and 1980s-style excess.

The never-before-told story of the Buss family and of one woman's rise to the top in a man's world, Laker Girl is an unprecedented glimpse into the glamorous world of the Los Angeles Lakers. It is also a behind-the-scenes journal of the 2009–10 Lakers season, a year in which the franchise captured its 16th world championship. By the time Jeanie was 19, she was already a high-ranking executive with World Team Tennis. Today, she is the Lakers' executive vice president of business operations and one of the most influential women in professional sports. Along the way, she's rubbed elbows with everyone from Michael Jordan, John McEnroe, and Shaquille O'Neal to Ryan Seacrest, Khloe Kardashian, Hugh Hefner, and Jack Nicholson. And she's done it all in her own unique, inimitable style. In this updated edition, Buss discusses her recent engagement to Phil Jackson and looks back on the Lakers' eventful past three seasons—an era that has included multiple coaching changes, changes in the front office, a new TV deal, and much more.

They were dominant in their early days in Minneapolis, but after they moved to Southern California, the Los Angeles Lakers became legendary champions. From the pioneers of the 1950s to the global superstars of today, get to know the players who made the Lakers one of the NBA’s top teams through the years.

In this revised and expanded edition, Los Angeles Times writer Mark Heisler investigates the 45-year history of the Los Angeles Lakers and unveils a pattern of pampered and/or misguided players, megalomaniacal executives, and owners whose obsessive drives for championships and attention combined to create an atmosphere of conflict for decades Throughout the entire 2003–04 season, fans and the media called the L.A. Lakers the biggest reality show in the country. But the laundry list of conflicts—the ongoing Kobe-Shaq bickering, Kobe's sexual assault trial, Phil Jackson's final season, Gary Payton's refusal to admit his physical decline, and the loss to Detroit in the championship—was just another year in the history of the Lakers. Madmen's Ball goes back to the Lakers' unceremonious arrival in Los Angeles in 1960 to show that the franchise has been embroiled in controversy, in-house battles and personality clashes for generations.