In the history of the NBA for half a century, the Los Angeles Lakers have always been one of the hottest teams in the league, from the beginning of the birth of this team, the purple and gold aristocratic blood has been flowing in the body of every team that plays for the Lakers, as of the 2014-2015 season, the Lakers have entered the NBA playoffs a total of 56 times, 31 Western Conference championships, and the number of 16 championship flags hoisted at the Staples Center is second only to the Celtics Boston Square Garden's 17 in the league. It is no exaggeration to say that the Lakers have become the banner of the NBA, in the past, and still are, although the Lakers' record in recent years has not been ideal for various reasons, but this has not wiped out the love for the Lakers in the hearts of the majority of fans, because of love, because of faith, every fan who loves the Lakers believes that the Lakers will rise one day, reach the playoffs, win the championship, just like at the beginning of the century, they did - OK combination fell apart, but only in just seven years, The team is standing on the highest stage of the NBA again!

The Lakers were not originally founded in Los Angeles, but in 1947 in Minneapolis, which is now the capital of Minnesota and the largest city in the state, but this was not the case at the time, because the Mississippi River runs through Minneapolis, and the city is also adjacent to the Great Lakes, so the summer air here is hot, Minneapolis is at the same latitude as Harbin, China, the winter is extremely cold, and the snow is often a few days and nights, and there are tornadoes and hail in the United States. It was one of the cities with the most natural disasters such as thunderstorms, so it was not suitable for high-calorie sports such as basketball due to the conditions at the time.

Minneapolis' population is complex and diverse, and most of the ancestors are refugees from five continents, so the people here yearn for peace, are open-minded, and like to accept new things, so although it is not suitable for the development of basketball, they still successfully formed an amateur basketball team in 1947, named the Lakers, which means the team of people living on the shores of the Great Lakes. Become one of the most successful and well-known teams in the league and become the highest temple in the hearts of teams around the world.

In 1948, the NBA was officially established, and the Minneapolis Lakers became the first team to enter the NBA.

Of course, McCann's success is inseparable from the support of his teammates, Jim Pollard is one of the most outstanding, at the beginning of the team's establishment Hartman invited the list of players, the first is Pollard, Pollard 198 cm, serving as a center, the physical condition is very good, it can be said that he is the first batch of dunks in the league, his breakthrough ability is not bad, once he rushes up, it is almost unstoppable, and later in order to give way to the dominant McCann under the basket, Pollard practiced a very accurate shot, Pollard became McCann's right-hand man, averaging 13.2 points and 7.0 rebounds in 438 games over seven years with the Lakers.

At that time, the first star in the team was George McCann, at the same time, he was also the first real superstar in NBA history, McCann was 208 cm tall, this height was a giant at the time, as long as McCann appeared under the basket, it was almost impossible to stop him from putting the basketball in the basket, the first season of the NBA, and also McCann's first season, he won the MVP of the NBA league, and averaged 30 points per game to send the Lakers to the championship, This started the glorious history of the Lakers in 6 years and 5 championships.

McCann played for the Minnesota Lakers for 7 years, averaging about 25 points per game, you must know that in that era, this score was already one-third of the team's proportion, because McCann was too powerful in the league, in order to prevent the game from becoming McCann's game alone, the league issued a lot of rules that were "tailor-made" for McCann, such as lengthening the distance between the free throw line and the restricted area, such as interfering with the ball, and then 3-second violations.

It is worth mentioning that although McCann was very powerful when he was young, but his later life was very bleak, because the NBA's player welfare system was not so developed at that time, so although McCann was famous outside Beijing, he actually had a very small salary, that is, ordinary salarymen, because of playing and unsystematic training, McCann also fell into an injury, and McCann only had a pension of $1000 a month in his later years, but he was suffering from diabetes and kidney failure, because of the former, he even lost a leg, On June 12, 2005, McCann passed away at the age of 80, and his family was so poor that he could not even pay for McCann's funeral, which was eventually paid by Shaquille O'Neal.

In 1958, the third year after McCann retired, the Lakers selected Elgin Baylor with a bitter gourd face with the first pick in the first round of the NBA draft, Baylor played for the Lakers for 12 years, and since then the Lakers have not won the championship for 12 consecutive seasons, and the more tragic is still to come, the Lakers did not have a good record at the beginning of the 1973 season. The disheartened Baylor announced his retirement, who knows what's wrong, Baylor has retired, and the Lakers keep winning like crazy, this year the Lakers created a 33-game winning streak that shook the past and the present, and successfully won the championship - seeing this, Baylor has cried and fainted in the thatched house......

Baylor did not win the championship not to say that he is not capable enough, when later generations talk about this history, they will always use "born at the wrong time" to describe Baylor, just like Zhou Yu who has been suppressed by Zhuge Liang in the Three Kingdoms, in fact, Baylor is a very good player, Baylor is not selected by a professional basketball team, but from a small place called "Entertainment Basketball League" to make a name for himself, and then attracted the attention of scouts from all sides, Baylor is a forward, 195 cm tall may be a little short in this position, But he holds the Lakers' highest rebounding record, a record that even Abdul-Jabbar, who has been with the Lakers for 14 years, has not broken it, Baylor can be regarded as a street ball on the offensive end, Baylor has the ability to play with dribbles, Baylor's bounce is very good, although there is no specific body side data, but people who have seen Baylor "fly" up have compared him to Jordan, his mid-range shooting is very accurate, and more importantly, Baylor's off-ball running is absolutely phenomenal, He can read the opponent's defensive strategy and find the flaws, Baylor can easily score under the heavy defense, Baylor at his peak is definitely the league's unsolvable existence, and he can average 38 points per game at the most powerful time!

In the year before Baylor came to the Minneapolis Lakers, McCann's performance on the court was already dying, his record was declining, and the fans didn't buy it - tickets were the main way for the team to make money, and the Lakers realized that if they continued like this, the team would definitely not last long before it was disbanded, so they brought in Elgin Baylor, who was fancy with his dribbling and super ability. It can be said that the Lakers at that time bet all their belongings on Baylor, and it turns out that they chose the right person.

In his debut season, Baylor scored the third-highest score in NBA history with 55 points, averaging 25 points and 15 rebounds per game, and the team made it all the way to the Finals, but they lost to the Boston Celtics who started a nine-game winning streak.

In the 1959-1960 season, Baylor averaged 30 points and 17 rebounds per game, and the team stopped in the division finals, and there were some off-court things this season, and on January 17, 1960, the Lakers received a 119-135 rout in St. Louis, and after taking a shower, the Lakers would include trainers, scouts, and a group of more than 20 people on the plane home.

At that time, the owner of the Lakers was called Bob Schutte, he was a very thrifty or very picky owner, the team's plane was already a model that should have been eliminated thirty years ago, but until the sixties, the Lakers were still in use, and soon misfortune came, the plane was hit by a snowstorm at an altitude of 10,000 feet, and the thick ice and snow made all the parts of the plane unable to work except for the engine and generator, including the inability to lower the landing gear, and the plane hovered over Minneapolis and could not landSeeing that the fuel tank of the plane was about to bottom out, the pilot was forced to land in a cornfield in Carroll Town, the plane was completely damaged, but fortunately, no one was injured in this incident, and the Lakers narrowly escaped a "catastrophe", and Bob Schutte was shocked after returning home, and immediately ordered the whole team to be relocated, and the team was moved from Minneapolis, a bitter cold place, to the big city of Los Angeles.

It is worth mentioning that the NBA league received the impact of this incident and urgently issued a "disaster clause", the central idea of which is that when a team in the league suffers a devastating disaster, everyone on the team can immediately carry out the expansion draft, and the other teams only have five more players per team to be protected, and other players will be selected by the expansion draft, and in the next year's draft, the expansion team still has the unconditional champion pick, fortunately, until half a century today, no team can be "lucky" This clause is used, but there are a few exceptions, that is, the Raptors, Grizzlies, and Bobcats used a similar "team building clause" when they were established, but the options of other teams changed from top-five protection to top-eight protection.

In his first season in Los Angeles, Baylor felt like he had been reborn – he was strong before, but now he's stronger! He was able to score 34 points and grab 19 rebounds in every game, including 71 points and 25 rebounds in a game against the Knicks, setting a single-game scoring record at the time, but in the playoffs, the Lakers lost to the Hawks again in seven games.

After this season, the Lakers' second rookie selected last year began to get on the right track, and his strong outburst allowed the Lakers to no longer rely on Baylor's single-core offense, but to operate in pairs, last season the rookie averaged "only" 17 points per game, but after one season, he can average 30 points per game!

This rookie is Jerry West, West is a talented player, his style of play is beautiful and flowing, but not losing the toughness, jump shot accurate, he can shoot a lot of shots that are farther away from the current three-point line, but there was no concept of the three-point line at that time, so West's three-point shooting percentage is really not exquisite, this year Baylor only played 48 games because of his military service, he averaged 38 points per game, West, on the other hand, averaged 30.8 points, 7.9 rebounds and 5.4 assists per game, and frequently hit key shots at the end of the game, and was dubbed "Mr. Key" by fans.

In Game 4 of the 1961-1962 Finals, Baylor scored 61 points, setting a record for individual scoring in a single NBA playoff game, and he averaged 40.6 points per game in this round of the series! In this game, the Lakers won a big score of 3-2 lead, and it seemed that victory was in sight, but then the Celtics won two games in a row and snatched the championship from the arms of the Lakers!

Stage a comeback? Who knew this was just the beginning! On the floor of the Finals in the following seven seasons, the Lakers faced the Celtics five times, losing them all! Although the combination of Baylor and West is becoming more and more proficient, although the Lakers also invited Wilt Chamberlain at the end of his career, but still can't get rid of the fate of losing, I have to say that Baylor is really a very psychologically endurable person, eight times into the finals, eight defeats, this has to be replaced by others, it has long collapsed, but Baylor in his twilight years still maintained strong self-confidence until he had to leave the game because of injury.

At the beginning of the 1971-1972 season, Baylor was not as good as before due to a serious knee injury, averaging only 11 points per game, and after nine games, a disheartened Baylor announced his retirement - he could have announced this decision after the end of the season, but he didn't, and after Baylor's retirement, the Lakers really became West's one-man team. Jim McMillan, who averaged only 8.4 points per game, became the starter, and the Lakers exploded into an amazing fight, they went on a 33-game winning streak and defeated the New York Knicks 4-1 in the Finals that year, West got the first and only championship ring of his career, but Baylor - if he announced his retirement after the season, the ring should have his name on it, but now......

What is not known to the world is that after this season, the Lakers made a championship ring for Baylor in recognition of Baylor's contribution to the team, but this is nothing to make up, when later generations talk about Baylor, they will always habitually crown the hat of "uncrowned king", Baylor played in the NBA for 14 seasons, averaging more than 27 points per game, but these did not change back a championship ring, which can not but be said to be a huge regret.

Now Baylor has scored a total of 19,333 points for the Lakers, ranking fourth in Lakers history, second only to Kobe Bryant, Jerry West and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and 9,263 rebounds are the second in team history!

The Lakers can win this championship should actually be thanks to Pat Riley, who was traded to the Lakers by the Trail Blazers this summer, and can contribute 6.7 points in 13.8 minutes per game, of course, his role is not reflected on the court, but he has his own championship attribute aura at that time, born at the wrong time, really born at the wrong time, Elgin Baylor cried and fainted in the toilet again......