Los Angeles Lakers: All-time starting five, with no teammates allowed
What would the all-time Los Angeles Lakers’ starting five be, with no teammates allowed?
The pseudo-NBA off-season has been the most boring time I’ve experienced in my 23 years of basketball fandom. Unlike the actual offseason, where you can speculate about trades, the draft, or even talk smack about the season prior, we’re stuck in purgatory with no hoops on the horizon and dying for something to talk about.
Amidst posts comparing Malcolm Brogdon to a character from The Office, one of the more thought-provoking exercises during this purgatory has been “all-time” lists. Through my journey to satiate my basketball appetite, I’ve seen discussion topics brandished such as “Greatest ten players in NBA history”, “Ten biggest busts of all time”, and even Lake Show Life’s own “All-time Lakers starting five“.
On my trawl through the world-wide-web, a specific Reddit thread caught my attention. The premise seemed simple on the surface:
"A twist on typical all-time teams: what is the all-time team for your franchise if you can only choose players who were never teammates? There can be no overlap in the years each player was with the team. Also, this only counts the years each player actually played for your team (example: no prime Shaq on the Suns)."
Sounds simple and reasonable enough, right? On the surface, it would appear so. As a Los Angeles Lakers fan though? We’re talking about a franchise that could realistically argue that they have six players featuring in the all-time top 10. Choosing between the very best players to ever play for arguably the most successful franchise in the history of the sport, is akin to choosing a favorite child, or between favorite championship runs that you got to witness.
Nevertheless, in the interest of generating fascinating mid-purgatory discussion, I have tasked myself with doing the seemingly impossible.
My methodology for choosing the “Lakers All-Time Starting 5: No Teammates Edition” is as follows:
- Find out the best individual Laker seasons according to advanced metrics
- Factor in a combination of overall team fit and chemistry
- Do all of this all while avoiding choosing players who were ever teammates.
One final point before I get started. The most common notation would dictate that the format for listing players would be:
- Point guard
- Shooting guard
- Small forward
- Power forward
- Center
However, because this exercise is so restrictive and because I want you to see why certain players were chosen and why some were excluded, I’m going to list them in the order that they were selected to my team.
Additionally, next to a player’s name, I will be listing which season of theirs led to their selection on my team (e.g. Kobe Bryant – 05/06).
Without further ado, let’s begin.