The Los Angeles Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels

Narda Zacchino

Time Capsule Press, 2009 - Sports & Recreation - 256 pages

The Los Angeles Lakers, 2009 NBA Champions and one of the most storied and illustrious franchises in the National Basketball Association, celebrate 50 years in Los Angeles in 2010. Since moving from Minneapolis in 1960, pioneering the NBA's expansion to the West Coast, The Lakers have won 10 NBA Championships, 24 Western Conference/Division titles, and 20 Pacific Division titles, and finished in the playoffs all but four seasons in the last half century. Some of the greatest players in NBA history have worn the Lakers jersey including Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, James Worthy and four of the NBA's Most Valuable Players"Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant. Seven LA Lakers were inducted into the Hall of Fame, as were head coaches Bill Sharman, Pat Riley and Phil Jackson. The team holds the record for the longest consecutive win streak in professional sports (33) and several NBA records including the most regular season wins and highest winning percentage over the past three decades. The Los Angeles Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels takes a look back at the heartbreaking rivalry with the Boston Celtics in the ~60s, fast-break Showtime basketball of ~80s, and dominance as four-time NBA champions this past decade. The story is told in more than 300 archival photos from Getty Images and text from the Los Angeles Times sports staff, including columns from the late Pulitzer Prize winner Jim Murray, with a foreword by Phil Jackson.

About the author

Photos by Getty Images, text from the Los Angeles Times sports staff. Phil Jackson was born in Deer Lodge, Montana on September 17, 1945. He graduated from the University of North Dakota. He played professional basketball for 11 seasons with the New York Knicks. After coaching in the Canadian Basketball Association and serving as the Chicago Bulls assistant coach for two years, he became the Bulls coach from 1989-1998. He coached the Bulls to six championships in the eight seasons between 1990-91 and 1997-98. He was the coach for the Los Angeles Lakers from 1999-2004 and from 2005 to 2011. He has written several books including The Last Season, which describes his point of view of the tensions that surrounded the 2003-04 Lakers team, and Sacred Hoops: Spiritual Lessons of a Hardwood Warrior, which is about mindful basketball and delineates his personal philosophy as well as his coaching and leadership style, based on Eastern and Native American principles. Jackson is also the author of Eleven Rings: The Soul of Successs.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Los Angeles Lakers: 50 Amazing Years in the City of Angels
• Editor: Narda Zacchino
• Photographs by: Getty Images, Inc. Staff
• Contributor: Phil Jackson
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Time Capsule Press, 2009
• ISBN: 0982324200, 9780982324202
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Sports & Recreation / Basketball