The Staples Center has been home to the Los Angeles Lakers since 1999 and has housed plenty of great moments for the purple and gold. While the Lakers are not going to a different arena anytime soon (but the Clippers are!), the Staples Center will no longer be the Staples Center.
It was announced on Tuesday that the Staples Center would be permanently changing its name to the Crypto.com Arena on December 25. Not quite a name that rolls off the tongue, but let’s be honest, people will keep calling it the Staples Center anyway.
With this historic arena name change, we wanted to look back at the best Lakers moments while it was still called the Staples Center.
The 5 greatest Los Angeles Lakers moments in the Staples Center:
5. Robert Horry’s Game 4 buzzer-beater over Sacramento
There is only one game-winning three-point shot made by a role player that is bigger than Robert Horry’s game-winner in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals (hi, Steve Kerr!). The biggest moment of Robert Horry’s career came on May 26, 2002.
With the Lakers trailing 2-1 in the series and trailing 99-97, Horry grabbed an errant rebound, chucked up a prayer and nailed the three-pointer to even the series at 2-2. You know the story by now and you’ve probably seen the highlight time and time again. How about another time?
The Lakers do not win this series and go to win the 2002 NBA Finals without Robert Horry’s heroics on this fateful night. As the only buzzer-beater on this list, it goes down as the greatest buzzer-beater (for the Lakers) in the Staples Center era.