15 facts about the Los Angeles Lakers that will blow your mind

Facts about the Los Angeles Lakers that will blow your mind, 1991-2000

7. The 1999-2000 Lakers were the first team in Los Angeles history to win a title without three Hall of Famers

It sounds crazy to believe, but every single Los Angeles Lakers team to win a championship before Kobe and Shaq started their three-peat had three Hall of Famers on the roster. With so much time passed since the three-peat, it is safe to say there will not be another Hall of Famer on that team.

There was one team in Lakers history to win a title with less than three Hall of Famers. The 1948-49 Minneapolis Lakers won with just two Hall of Famers. The 2009-10 Lakers had two likely Hall of Famers (Kobe and Pau Gasol) while the 2020 Lakers had at least three, maybe four (LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Dwight Howard and maybe Rajon Rondo).

8. Cedric Ceballos received an MVP vote in 1995

This is the fun bar trivia that you might have been looking for. If the question is who is the weirdest Laker to ever receive an NBA vote then the answer is Cedric Ceballos. The one-time all-star received one fifth-place vote in his lone all-star season in 1995 to officially put his name in the MVP conversation with some of the greatest of all time.

9. Magic Johnson’s break from the NBA lasted twice as long as his career as an executive

Magic Johnson was forced to retire prematurely after announcing that he contracted HIV. After last playing in 1991, Johnson returned for 32 games in the 1995-96 season for the Lakers.

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The gap between Game 5 of the 1991 NBA Finals and Johnson’s return on January 30, 1996, was 1,693 days. Over 20 years later he would be hired as the President of Basketball Operations for the Lakers on February 21, 2017.

Johnson re-signed via public press conference on April 9, 2019, lasting just 777 days as an executive. His gap between playing NBA games was over twice as long as his career as an executive.