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Team Profile
Los Angeles Lakers: Five things you need to know
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Andrew Bogut is the only Australian to have played for the Lakers, basketball's grandest franchise.
- Andrew Bogut is the only Australian to have played for the Lakers.
- The Lakers have won 17 championships, five in Minneapolis and 12 in Los Angeles.
- Oklahoma City swept the Lakers in the 2026 Western Conference semifinals in 2025-26
The Los Angeles Lakers are the grandest brand in basketball, and for one season an Australian was part of it.
Andrew Bogut signed with the Lakers in 2017 as a veteran backup, the first Australian ever to wear the most famous uniform in the sport. It was a brief stay, 24 games before he was waived in January 2018, but it made the man from Melbourne, already the first Australian selected first overall in an NBA draft and an NBA champion, a footnote in the history of a franchise that trades in legends.
That is the scale of the Lakers. Seventeen championships, a lineage of the greatest players who ever lived, and a new era just beginning around one of the best in the world today.
Australians who have played for the Los Angeles Lakers
Andrew Bogut is the only Australian to have played for the Lakers, and he arrived with a substantial career already behind him. Born in Melbourne in 1984, he was the first overall pick of the 2005 NBA Draft, the first Australian ever taken at number one, and won an NBA championship as the starting centre of the 2015 Golden State Warriors.
He signed with Los Angeles in September 2017 on a veteran's minimum and served as a backup centre, mentoring a young Ivica Zubac, before the Lakers waived him in January 2018 after 24 games. He returned home soon after to join the Sydney Kings, won an NBL Most Valuable Player award, and retired in 2020. His stint in purple and gold was short, but it made him the first, and so far the only, Australian to play for the franchise.
2026-27 team snapshot
The offseason changed the franchise's direction.
LeBron James opted out of the final year of his contract on July 1, 2026 and informed the Lakers he intends to play elsewhere in 2026-27, ending a seven-year stay and leaving the team fully to Dončić.
To build around him, the Lakers acquired centre Walker Kessler from Utah on July 8, 2026, added guard Jaden Hardy from Washington, and re-signed Austin Reaves, the homegrown guard who has become the third piece of the core.
Why the Lakers matter
There is no franchise like the Lakers, because there is no history like theirs.
Seventeen championships, tied for the most in NBA history. A run of superstars that goes George Mikan, Jerry West, Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James, essentially unbroken across seven decades. The Lakers do not rebuild so much as reload, and they have spent their entire existence as the team every other team measures itself against.
Now they have Luka Dončić, at 26, for the years ahead. The brand and the talent have found each other again.
From Minneapolis to Los Angeles
The Lakers are one of the NBA's founding dynasties, and they began nowhere near California.
Founded in 1947 as the Minneapolis Lakers, named for Minnesota's thousands of lakes, the franchise won five championships in six seasons behind George Mikan, professional basketball's first dominant big man. When they moved to Los Angeles in 1960, they brought the name and the winning habit with them.
Every one of the franchise's 17 titles belongs to that single lineage: five in Minneapolis, 12 in Los Angeles.
West, Baylor and the 1972 breakthrough
The early Los Angeles years were defined by brilliance and heartbreak.
Jerry West, whose silhouette became the NBA logo, and Elgin Baylor, one of the most creative scorers the game had seen, led the Lakers to the Finals repeatedly through the 1960s and lost every time, usually to the Boston Celtics. The rivalry that resulted is the deepest in the sport.
The breakthrough came in 1972. With West, an ageing Wilt Chamberlain and a 33-game winning streak that is still an NBA record, the Lakers won 69 games and the championship, the franchise's first in Los Angeles.
Showtime
The 1980s Lakers changed how basketball looked.
Built around Magic Johnson, a 206cm point guard who passed like no one before him, and the great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and his unblockable skyhook, and coached by Pat Riley, the Showtime Lakers played a fast, joyful, winning brand of basketball that defined the decade. With James Worthy alongside, they won five championships in the 1980s and renewed the Celtics rivalry at its highest level, against Larry Bird's Boston.
Magic Johnson remains, for many, the greatest Laker of them all.
Shaq, Kobe and the modern dynasties
The Lakers do not stay quiet for long.
Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant formed the most dominant duo of their era, winning three straight titles from 2000 to 2002 under Phil Jackson. Bryant, after O'Neal's departure, added two more in 2009 and 2010 and built a case as the closest thing the game has produced to Michael Jordan.
A decade later, LeBron James and Anthony Davis delivered the franchise's 17th championship in the 2020 bubble. Then, in February 2025, the Lakers made the trade almost no one saw coming, acquiring Luka Dončić from Dallas, and the next era had its face.
The greatest Lakers of all time
Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Kobe Bryant form the top tier, three of the greatest players in the sport's history, each the centrepiece of multiple championships. Shaquille O'Neal was the most dominant force of his time. Jerry West and Elgin Baylor built the Los Angeles foundation, and George Mikan built the whole franchise in Minneapolis.
LeBron James delivered a title at 35 and was still an All-Star at 41. James Worthy and Pau Gasol were the essential seconds on championship teams.
Five Fast Facts
- The Lakers have won 17 NBA championships, tied for the most in league history.
- The franchise began as the Minneapolis Lakers in 1947 and moved to Los Angeles in 1960.
- The 1971-72 Lakers won 33 games in a row, still the longest winning streak in NBA history.
- Andrew Bogut is the only Australian to have played for the Lakers, in 2017-18.
- Luka Dončić was acquired from Dallas in February 2025 and made All-NBA First Team in his first full season.
Historical Timeline
- 1947: Founded as the Minneapolis Lakers.
- 1949-1954: Win five championships behind George Mikan.
- 1960: Franchise relocates to Los Angeles.
- 1972: First Los Angeles title, with a record 33-game winning streak.
- 1979: Draft Magic Johnson first overall.
- 1980-1988: Win five Showtime-era championships.
- 2000-2002: Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant win three straight titles.
- 2009-2010: Kobe Bryant leads back-to-back championships.
- 2017: Andrew Bogut becomes the first Australian to play for the Lakers.
- 2020: LeBron James and Anthony Davis win the franchise's 17th title.
- 2025: Acquire Luka Dončić from Dallas.
- 2026: Win 53 games and the Pacific, then are swept by Oklahoma City in the second round.
Looking ahead
The Luka Dončić era at the Lakers now begins in earnest, because the man who shared the locker room with him is gone. LeBron James, after seven seasons and the 2020 championship, opted out and chose to chase a final chapter elsewhere, with Golden State reported as the frontrunner. It is the end of an era in Los Angeles and the clean start of another.
That leaves the franchise unambiguously Dončić's, at 26 and under contract, with Austin Reaves re-signed and Walker Kessler adding the rim protection the roster lacked. The Lakers have their cornerstone and, for the first time in years, a roster built entirely around one man's timeline rather than two. What they no longer have is the safety net of the greatest compiler in the sport's history. This is Luka's team now, in full.
For Australian fans, the Lakers remain a light connection, a single 24-game cameo from Andrew Bogut the only thread. But it is a fitting one: the first Australian ever drafted first overall, and an NBA champion, wore the most famous jersey in the sport, however briefly.
