Tag: Elgin Baylor

18 Lakers selected to NBA 75th Anniversary Team

The Los Angeles Lakers had 18 players, both current and former, selected to the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team.

The 2021-22 NBA season marks the 75th anniversary of the league, which is an astonishing milestone for any league.

To celebrate, the NBA has been acknowledging legends of the game both current and former in a variety of ways.

For the NBA 75th Anniversary Team, the league named 75 of the league’s best players in batches of 25.

The Los Angeles Lakers had 18 players make the list. For a franchise with such a rich history, being one of the most represented teams on the list was expected.

LeBron James was among those selected, and he shared his reaction to the news on Twitter.

From James and more, here is the full list of Lakers that made the team:

12 Lakers make USA TODAY’s Top 75 players in NBA history list

See where 12 members of the Los Angeles Lakers ranked in a list of the NBA’s Top 75 players in history.

The 2021-22 season will mark the NBA’s 75th anniversary of the league, which is a phenomenal achievement for any sporting league to have.

Throughout the league’s founding, there have been so many incredible talents that fans have grown to revere across decades and generations.

With it being the 75th season, the league will be spending time honoring its past and iconic players of the present.

That will certainly be the case for the Los Angeles Lakers. With a roster comprising LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Russell Westbrook, Carmelo Anthony and other future Hall of Famers, L.A.’s reputation for being a household place of talent lives on.

To honor the best players the league has seen, USA TODAY compiled a ranking of the top 75 players. Let’s look at where members of the Lakers ranked (paid subscription required):

Lakers players, fans pay tribute to NBA legend Elgin Baylor

Lakers legend Elgin Baylor has passed away at the age of 86.

The NBA community lost a legend on Monday. The Los Angeles Lakers announced that 11-time NBA All-Star Elgin Baylor, who spent his entire career with the franchise after being drafted No. 1 overall by the Minneapolis Lakers in 1958, has died of natural causes at the age of 86.

Baylor, whose number 22 is hanging in the rafters in the Staples Center, is one of the most accomplished Lakers of all time, and arguably the best player in NBA history to never win a title. Baylor made the All-NBA first team 10 times in his career, including in his first season in the league.

Baylor was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1977. The Lakers have been wearing Elgin Baylor tribute uniforms throughout this season in his honor.

Players and fans paid tribute to Baylor on social media after the news broke:

Murray and Mitchell took the record …

Murray and Mitchell took the record away from Jerry West and John Havlicek, who, in fairness, had their own unbelievable shootout with slightly higher stakes at hand, in the 1969 Finals. The two Hall-of-Fame ball-handlers combined for 463 points in that series, 12 fewer than what Murray and Mitchell just put up. The other highest-scoring playoff series duos all likewise took place in the 1960s and ’70s – Bob McAdoo and Elvin Hayes in the 1975 conference semifinals (461 points), Elgin Baylor and Bob Pettit in the 1961 division finals (461 points) and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Rick Barry in the 1977 conference finals (450 points).