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Los Angeles Lakers: Ranking the best teams that didn’t win the title

By Jason Reed

Kobe Bryant (R) of the Los Angeles Lakers moves the ball before Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics during the Game One of the 2008 NBA Finals, in Boston, Massachusetts, June 5, 2008. Pierce shrugged off a right knee sprain to score 22 points, sparking the Boston Celtics past the Los Angeles Lakers 98-88 to open the National Basketball Association Finals. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images)
Kobe Bryant (R) of the Los Angeles Lakers moves the ball before Paul Pierce of the Boston Celtics during the Game One of the 2008 NBA Finals, in Boston, Massachusetts, June 5, 2008. Pierce shrugged off a right knee sprain to score 22 points, sparking the Boston Celtics past the Los Angeles Lakers 98-88 to open the National Basketball Association Finals. AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYS (Photo credit should read GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP via Getty Images) /
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Photo credit should read DAN LEVINE/AFP via Getty Images) – Los Angeles Lakers
Photo credit should read DAN LEVINE/AFP via Getty Images) – Los Angeles Lakers /

The Los Angeles Lakers‘ history is full of NBA Championships, 16 in fact, but there have also been some spectacular teams in the franchise’s history that were not able to get it done and win it all.

Our colleagues over at Silver Screen & Roll broke down some of their best Laker teams to never win a championship, so we wanted to join in on the fun and rank the top-five Laker teams that did not bring home a banner.

Ironically, we only have one team in common between their three teams that they broke down and the five teams that we are ranking here. We took into consideration a win-loss record, how far the team went in the playoffs as well as Simple Rating System (SRS), which combines average point differential and strength of schedule to give each team a comparable rating.

Best Los Angeles Lakers team to not win a championship: 5. 1997-1998 Lakers

  • Record: 61-21
  • Playoffs result: Defeated by Utah Jazz (0-4) in the Western Conference Finals
  • SRS: 6.88

The only team that we and SSR have in common is the 1997-1998 Lakers, a team that definitely overachieved for what was expected of them and gave us a taste of what was to come in the team’s near future.

Shaquille O’Neal was doing Shaquille O’Neal things and this really was the start of his dominant prime and Kobe Bryant became an all-star for the first time with an absolutely tremendous showing as the team’s sixth man.

Eddie Jones was a reliable wing for the team who was also an all-star and was an important player not just for the team winning games, but helping Kobe Bryant blossom into the Hall of Famer that he would eventually become.

The playoffs were fairly smooth sailing for this team as well as the Portland Trailblazers and Seattle Supersonics surprisingly both won just one game against the Lakers in the first two rounds.

However, the Lakers were eventually overmatched by the Karl Malone–John Stockton Utah Jazz, who swept the Lakers and went on to lose in the NBA Finals to Michael Jordan and the Bulls in six games.

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