Remember back in the day, oh, four or five months ago, when some thought that Los Angeles had become a Clipper town? So much for that romantic notion.
The big, bad Lakers are back, just like always. Back enough to unseat the Thunder as the Western Conference champ? Not necessarily. But a lineup of Dwight Howard, Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Steve Nash and Metta World Chaos is a roving Hall of Fame exhibit. Four guys past their wondrous prime, plus Howard, who has gone from Superman to Superpain. There might be enough fuel in the tank for the Lakers to mount another championship run. Heck, the Celtics dang near made the NBA Finals with an Over-the-Hill Gang; no reason the Dwightmares couldn’t do the same.
And for those who thought the Lakers would slip quietly into anonymity, leaving the West for the likes of the Thunder and Clippers and Grizzlies, well, you don’t know your NBA history.
The Lakers moved West from Minneapolis in 1960. Rookie Jerry West teamed with star Elgin Baylor, but the Lakers went just 36-43. Still, they reached the West finals against the Hawks and lost in seven games. And a Western dynasty was born.
Over the next seven seasons, LA made the NBA Finals five times. And lost all five times to the Boston Celtics. Those Laker teams always had a serviceable center. Rudy LaRusso, Darrall Imhoff, Mel Counts.
But the Lakers grew tired of losing to Boston. And in July 1968, the Lakers started one of the NBA’s grand traditions. The migration of the NBA’s best center to LakerLand.
The 76ers traded Wilt Chamberlain to LA for Jerry Chambers, Archie Clark and Imhoff. Chambers was young but a role player and never rose above that status. Clark was young and promising, and indeed he had a good career; Clark averaged 25 points a game for the 1971-72 Baltimore Bullets. Imhoff had four more journeymen years in the NBA.
Wilt was Wilt, of course, though he delivered only one NBA title to the Lakers, in 1972, after injuries had ended Baylor’s days. But the plot was written. Los Angeles believed it had a divine right to the best centers in the NBA.
So after Wilt was gone, and the Lakers languished for two seasons with Elmore Smith as their center, LA struck again. In June 1975, the Lakers traded four solid players â€" Smith, Brian Winters, Dave Meyers and Junior Bridgeman â€" to Milwaukee for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Of all the trades in sports history, never has such an athlete been traded. Not an athlete this good, at the top of his game. Jabbar was 28 years old and the class of the league by a mile. Just like with Wilt, it took awhile for the Lakers to get going; they didn’t win the NBA title until Jabbar’s fifth season, when Magic Johnson joined the troupe, but it was the first of five won in the ’80s by Jabbar and the Lakers.
The gravitational pull of the NBA’s best centers to LA wasn’t over. In July 1996, the Lakers, having gone eight years since a title and having just one playoff series victory in the previous four years, signed free agent center Shaquille O’Neal. Together with emerging star Kobe Bryant, the Lakers had a 1-2 duo poised to take over the league. It took until Year 4, but then the Lakers won three NBA championships.
And now comes Dwight Howard, apparently traded Friday from Orlando to the Lakers. It cost LA its own gargantuan center, Andrew Bynum, who is an emotional wreck but a heck of a talent. So this isn’t the huge upgrade like in Laker pasts. But still, the NBA’s best center again has landed in Los Angeles.
It’s just the natural order the spot. Commissioners change, the 3-point line appears, franchises move, salary caps come, luxury taxes rise, the game goes international. Nothing stays the same except the game’s best centers migrate to the Lakers.
-------------Berry Tramel can be heard Monday through Friday from 4:40-5:20 p.m. on The Sports Animal radio network, including AM-640 and FM-98.1. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter @BerryTramel. Visit Berry's website here.Thank you for joining our conversation on Berry Tramel's Blog. We encourage your discussion but ask that you stay within the bounds of our commenting and posting policy.
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