The Los Angeles Lakers are arguably the most prestigious team in the NBA and throughout the franchise’s history, several different dominant championship eras have emerged.
We can compare and contrast the teams all we want using traditional methods, such as total wins or championship, as well as advanced metrics. However, the one hurdle that always exists in those conversations is the historical gap.
Basketball has changed and evolved so much over the years that it can be hard arguing which team would win in a historical matchup as you would have to take into account the playstyle and rule set of that era.
Luckily, in this current downtime in the NBA we could turn to something that they definitely did not have in the older eras: video games. Video games are obviously far from being 100 percent accurate and are not the sole deciding factor of these debates, but they are a useful tool to put these teams against each other and see what the game’s simulation has to say.
Using this tool, we pitted four all-time Los Angeles Lakers teams against each other in a tournament-style bracket.
We are using NBA 2K20 for this small, four-team tournament and while 2K20 is great at having historical teams, they do not have all of the teams in Laker history. While there are several different versions of certain eras (such as the Showtime Lakers), we picked the best version of each era.
The four Los Angeles Lakers teams that we are pitting against each other are:
- 1970-1971 Los Angeles Lakers
- 1986-1987 Los Angeles Lakers
- 2000-2001 Los Angeles Lakers
- 2019-2020 Los Angeles Lakers
If they were available to use, we would have loved to use the 2008-2010 Lakers with Pau Gasol or the early Minneapolis Lakers with George Mikan. These are the four teams we are running with.
We seeded the four teams by year, so the 1970-1971 team is squaring off against today’s Lakers with the Showtime Lakers and Kobe-Shaq Lakers squaring off in the other matchup. We conducted a seven-game series of simulations.
2019-2020 Lakers defeat the 1970-1971 Lakers, 4-1.
In a surprising twist of events, the current day Lakers not only beat the only team that Jerry West won a championship with, but defeated them pretty handily.
West is the best player on the team overall-wise and with an old Elgin Baylor, a Wilt Chamberlain that is outside his prime and a Gail Goodrich who is probably underrated, the current day Lakers were able to match up nicely in this series.
LeBron James averaged nearly a triple-double with 26.4 points, 9.6 assists and 8.2 rebounds per game while Anthony Davis led the team in scoring with 27.4 points, 10.2 rebounds and 2.2 blocks per game.
The big difference seemed to be the three-point shots as the old Lakers did not play with a three-point line and the ratings reflected that. The current day Lakers made 12 threes a game while the Jerry West Lakers made just six.
1986-1987 Lakers defeat the 2000-2001 Lakers, 4-2
The Showtime Lakers took care of the Kobe-Shaq Lakers with the biggest difference being the role players on the Showtime Lakers. While the Kobe-Shaq Lakers had a good support system, the Showtime Lakers had the obvious upper-hand outside of the top-two with James Worthy, Michael Cooper and company.
The series was tied at one game apiece and the 2000-2001 Lakers actually won Game 3 to take a 2-1 series lead. However, that is when the Showtime Lakers took over, winning the next three games all by eight points or less to get past the 2000-2001 Lakers.
So in our Finals, we have Magic Johnson, who is comparable to LeBron James, and Karee, Abdul-Jabbar, who has a similar playstyle to Anthony Davis.
1986-1987 Lakers defeat the 2019-2020 Lakers, 4-2
The Showtime Lakers were just too much to handle for the modern-day Lakers. While they were able to steal games down 2-0 and then down 3-1 with their three-point shooting, the superstar duos on both teams practically canceled each other out and the difference became, yet again, the supporting cast.
Surprisingly, the games that the modern-day Lakers won were both blowouts. Game 3 was a 14-point victory and Game 5 was an 18-point victory. With the Showtime Lakers winning their games by four points, 10 points, four points and seven points, the Modern-Day Lakers actually had a seven-point advantage in the total point differential.
But it does not matter. The Showtime Lakers got the victory and in our fun little simulation, they were named the best Los Angeles Lakers team of all-time.