The Los Angeles Lakers – one of the most popular professional teams of the National Basketball Association (NBA), located in Los Angeles, the State of California.
The team play their house games in the Staples Center, dividing the arena with their NBA competitors – the Los Angeles Klippers, and their “sisterly” team – the Los Angeles Sparks of the Women’s National Basketball Association.
The team was based in 1946 in Detroit, Michigan, then it moved to Minneapolis, where the Lakers received the official name from a popular nickname of staff – “Land of 10,000 Lakes “.
Popularity of the Lakers raised in 1980s – the years when they won five additional championships during a nine-year interval with leadership of players, whose names are brought in the Hall of Glory of Basketball: Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and the coach Pat Riley.
Besides, Lakers is the team with the longest consecutive strip of victories in the American professional sports competitions. Fourteen players, whose names are represented in the Basketball Hall of Fame played for Lakers, and also 4 coaches (John Kundla, Bill Sharman, Pat Riley and Phil Jackson) trained them during various periods of time. Four Lakers players (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant) were recognized to be the best players by the NBA.
Kobe Bryant received the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award after the final play-off game. For Bryant the champion ring became the fifth in his career (also in 2000-2002).
According to the data of traditional annual poll, 63 percent of respondents believe that the cup-final of the 2010/11 season would also be won by the Lakers.