The Bass family era in the past half a century: those critical time nodes for the Lakers?

TA/By James Jackson

When Dr. Jerry Bass bought a stake in the Los Angeles Lakers for $67.5 million, including a 13,000-acre ranch in the Sierra Nevada, hardly anyone could have foreseen that the team would develop into a global sports brand in the next few decades.

And with this week's rumor that after Jerry Bass died, his daughter Jenny Bass is leading a record sale of up to $10 billion, transferring the Lakers to well-known financier Mark Walter, the Lakers once again set a new benchmark inside and outside the basketball world.

As Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic pointed out, while Walter will eventually take over the team's operations, Jenny Bass is expected to manage the team for many years after the deal is completed. Even if the deal is officially completed, the Bass Family Trust will retain 18% of the team's shares, and Jenny Bass will continue to serve as the team's chairman.

Nevertheless, the deal marks a major shift at the league level. Because it can be said that the most influential team in the league will soon receive more resource support, and under the control of the Bass family, the Lakers have already achieved unparalleled success.

In the 46 years since the acquisition in 1979, the Lakers have shuttled between peaks and troughs, not only reshaping the NBA that was still in its early stages of development, but also injecting new vitality into the league with Jerry Bass's vision of "Showtime Basketball". The success of the Bass family is reflected in 11 championships, 17 Finals trips, the tradition of attracting Hall of Fame players, and many historical moments, whether it is glory or trough, they are deeply imprinted in the history of the NBA. Under the leadership of the Bass family, some of the most important historical nodes of the Lakers:

Showtime Early

Although Jerry Bass invested a huge amount of money in the acquisition of the Lakers, if there was no matching superstar power to turn his vision into reality, the value of this investment would be greatly reduced. Kareem Abdul Jabbar was already a member of the team at that time, but the selection of Magician Elvin Johnson in 1979 truly laid the most critical cornerstone for the dynasty built by Bass - it can be said that this was the starting point of one of the most successful championship periods after the merger of the ABA and the NBA. The immediate rewards brought by the franchise of

The franchise of magicians are still unmatched. How many 20-year-olds can start their careers with comprehensive data averaged 18 points, 7.7 rebounds, 7.3 assists and 2.4 steals per game? It is more worth mentioning that this recognized one of the best point guards in history has not yet technically played where he is best in his rookie season. (Don't forget that Norm Nixon was in charge at that time!)

Of course, this may not be surprising. After all, in the sixth game of the 1980 finals, the Magic replaced the injured Jabbar as center, led the team to win the championship with the "Mini Sky Hook" and became the youngest finals MVP in history, and has not been broken to this day.

Although the Lakers have achieved great success under a new roster and ambitious new boss, the team still needs to make adjustments. After only six games started in the 1981-82 season, Magic Johnson publicly expressed his dissatisfaction with then-coach Paul Westhead, a move paving the way for Pat Riley, who was only 36 years old at the time, to take charge of the coach.

At first, Bass wanted Lakers legend and "NBA logo" Jerry West as head coach, but the latter rejected the position, giving Riley a chance to lead a new era of "Showtime" basketball.

Under Riley's leadership, the Lakers achieved 50 wins and 21 losses in the regular season and eventually won the 1982 championship, while establishing a new team status.

Champion Vitality

The Lakers' 17 championship trophys are second only to their rivals Boston Celtics, ranking second in league history, but this desire and reputation for championships was truly established after Jerry Bass took over the team. Since 1979, the Lakers have won 11 championships, far exceeding any team during the same period, establishing their position at the top of NBA power.

However, before this, the Lakers had long been chasing the dynastic Celtics, especially in the context of the Celtics winning eight consecutive championships in the Bill Russell era, the Lakers needed to make a series of key adjustments to finally achieve the transformation from challenger to ruler.

Before Buss acquired the team, he had never achieved a consecutive championship since the Lakers moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles. The joining of rookies such as James Worthy (No. 1 pick in 1982) and Byron Scott (No. 4 pick in 1983) has injected fresh vitality into the Showtime era. The introduction of former NBAMVP Bob McAdu and other veterans has greatly enhanced the depth of the substitute lineup and supported the gradually stronger starting team. An all-around player like Michael Cooper is the key factor that makes the Lakers move from excellence to invincible.

In more than eight seasons in which Pat Riley coached the Lakers (including the playoffs), the Lakers dominated the league in multiple dimensions: winning rate (72.5%), total wins (635 games), playoff wins (102 games), finals (7 times) and total championships (4 seats), all of which were the first in the league during the same period. At the peak of Showtime era, the Lakers won at least 60 regular season games in four consecutive seasons, with Magic Johnson, Jabbar and Worthy winning the Finals MVP in different championship years respectively.

All this is based on a fast-paced offensive system with gorgeous passes and fast break scores as the core. In addition, the unparalleled celebrity atmosphere on the sidelines, especially the celebrity stands led by actor Jack Nicholson, making the Lakers a super brand that is not just a basketball club.

Despite such brilliant achievements, the Lakers still need to complete the transition from old to new. In June 1989, after the team lost to the Detroit Pistons, who lost the championship, Jabbar announced his retirement, which sounded the first alarm for the end of the Lakers dynasty. This is just the beginning of the domino fall.

Shortly after Jabbar left, Pat Riley, who had been in charge of the Lakers' coach for eight years, also became dissatisfied. When he thought he had completed his mission in Los Angeles, he officially resigned as Lakers coach on June 11, 1990, although he had just won the coach of the year for his performance in the 1989-90 season and had two years left in his contract.

This marks the official end of the Showtime era and also indicates that the Lakers will enter a new chapter.

Post Showtime Era

Although the Showtime Era has come to an end, Magic Johnson is still the face of the Lakers, although his player career is not much left.

In the 1990-91 season, Johnson still remained in shape, won the last NBA All-Squad first team in his career, and ranked second in the MVP voting, leading the team to the finals. However, just a few months after that season, the sports world received a shocking news.

During a routine physical examination before the 1991-92 season, Johnson was found to be infected with HIV. He then held a press conference and announced his immediate retirement. This news not only shocked the NBA, but also rewritten the entire sports community's understanding of AIDS.

After his retirement, the Lakers and Jerry Bass have always firmly supported Johnson, making him a symbol and pioneer in the global fight against HIV.

At that time, global understanding of HIV was still very limited. While facing the biggest challenges in life and career, Johnson also has to endure doubts about whether he should participate in the 1992 All-Star Game and even about his sexual orientation. In the eyes of the public, he is not only a basketball superstar, but also a pioneer in fighting misunderstandings and prejudice.

Fortunately, Johnson maintained good health and has since devoted himself to education and advocacy for HIV/AIDS. He even made a brief comeback at the end of the 1995-96 season and told the world with practical actions: he can still dominate the game.

However, during his absence, the Lakers fell into a trough, and the glory of the former champion was hard to find. The successive first round of the playoffs and the complete miss-out of the playoffs forced Jerry Bass to re-examine the team's future direction. With the assistance of general manager Jerry West, he began to develop a brand new set of championship formulas. The summer of 1996 is widely regarded as the most influential summer in NBA history. The draft that year is still amazing, and the most shining gem is Kobe Bryant, who is only 17 years old. He was selected by the Charlotte Hornets at the 13th pick, but was then brought to Los Angeles by Jerry West in a deal (a tribute to Vlad Divacs here!).

On July 18, 1996, the Lakers signed Shaquille O'Neal with a 7-year, $120 million contract, and since then it has created the most powerful dual-core combination in NBA history, even if it takes time to really get started. In O'Neal's first season with Bryant, O'Neal played only 51 games, but still won the ninth place in the MVP vote, leading the Lakers to a regular season record of 56 wins and 26 losses under the coach of head coach Del Harris, which is the team's best performance since the 1990-91 season.

However, the ending of this season was quite dull. In Game 4 of the Western Conference Semi-Finals against the Utah Jazz, rookie Kobe scored four three-nos, and the Lakers eventually lost after five games. Despite this, this year laid the foundation for the dynasty and the legend had just set off.

Bass is always firmly committed to reshaping the glory of champion basketball in Los Angeles. After several early exits to the playoffs, the Lakers invited Phil Jackson as head coach before the 1999-2000 season started. He led Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls to win six championship trophys. In addition, the Lakers have strengthened many experienced veterans, such as Brian Shaw, Ron Harper, and former Lakers' former player AC Green during the Showtime period to improve the lineup structure.

By the end of the 1999-2000 season, O'Neal had undisputedly established his position as the most dominant player in the league, and Kobe began to grow into an All-Star and an All-NBA regular. The Lakers eventually won their first NBA championship that season since 1988. Their regular season record of 67 wins and 15 losses is the best result since the 1971-72 season (69 wins), indicating that the starting point of a dynasty has arrived. After the end of the season, Jackson further took over the team's operations, while Jerry West stepped down from management to make way for the Lakers in the new era.

The Lakers won 11 games less regular season record in the 2000-2001 season than the previous season, but their performance in the playoffs is one of the most dominant chapters in basketball history. They swept the team with an amazing record of 15 wins and 1 loss in that playoffs, successfully defending their title, winning the second consecutive championship trophy. That year, the 93.8% winning rate in the playoffs is still the second highest in the NBA history in a single season, second only to the Golden State Warriors' 16 wins and 1 loss (94.1%) in 2017.

After completing three consecutive championships in 2002, the Lakers became the first team to achieve this feat since the Jordan era Bulls. They are still the most recent team in NBA history to achieve three consecutive championships. Considering the second luxury tax line implemented by the league today, this record may remain for quite some time.

With the end of the Lakers' three consecutive championship dynasty, new challenges have come one after another: from contract disputes, conflicts between players and coaches, to failed free agent signing, to losing to the Pistons in the 2004 Finals and failing to achieve the goal of four championships in five years.

One of the worst storms came from a sexual assault case involving Kobe Bryant in 2003. In the summer of that year, a 19-year-old female hotel employee in Eagle County, Colorado accused Kobe of sexual assault. According to the charge, Kobe was charged with a third-degree felony, the second most serious sexual assault in Colorado after first-degree. On July 4, Kobe voluntarily surrendered to the local police and was released one hour after paying $25,000 in bail. The

case had several major turning points before the trial. First, the plaintiff's name was mistakenly leaked by the media, which aroused widespread attention and controversy. After the jury was selected, the plaintiff decided not to testify again, resulting in the criminal charges being dropped. Kobe publicly apologized to the plaintiff and his family, but always insisted that he was not guilty. Subsequently, the two parties launched a 20-month civil lawsuit, which ended in an out-of-court settlement.

In addition, by the end of the 2003-04 season, O'Neal's partner with Kobe had obviously come to an end, which eventually led to O'Neal being traded to the Miami Heat. Meanwhile, Phil Jackson resigned from his head coaching position and later wrote a book that revealed the inside story of the Lakers' chaotic season, saying that Kobe was "difficult to teach." In this regard, the Lakers management expressed objections to Jackson's views. The Lakers' brief window to win the championship after O'Neal's departure seemed very fragile. Kobe became the absolute core of the team, while Jackson returned to the coaching seat after leaving the Lakers for a season, and players such as Lamar Odom and Caron Butler helped the team complete the transition to a new era.

Just like in the early 1990s, several first-round playoff eliminations forced the Lakers to reflect on themselves and prepare to make adjustments.

Everyone still remembers Kobe asked for a deal in public in a shopping mall, and the Bass family was open to it, but eventually convinced him to stay. At that time, Kobe was playing the best basketball of his career (average of 35.4 points per game in the 2005-06 season, fourth in MVP voting, and third in MVP voting in the 2006-07 season), but the Lakers' final performance was still disappointing, which was incredible for a team that could score 81 points in a single game or surpass their opponents in a single quarter.

Reconstruction around Kobe

On February 1, 2008, the Lakers won All-Star Power Forward Paul Gasol through a trade with the Memphis Grizzlies. This reinforcement made the core lineup, which was already competing for the top four seeds in the West, immediately became a strong contender for the championship.

By the end of the 2007-08 season, less than a year after Kobe made a deal, he won the MVP honor of his career for the first time. The Lakers also entered the finals again after nearly five years. Although they eventually lost to the headache-inducing Celtics, they reshaped the window of hope for the championship for the team.

Over the next two seasons, Kobe put a perfect end to his championship resume, leading the Lakers to two consecutive championships and won two NBA Finals MVP awards in his career. Jackson returned to the coaching bench and reignited the Lakers' championship glory, but the flame began to gradually fade soon.

On May 9, 2011, just after the Lakers' dream of winning three consecutive championships was swept by the Dallas Mavericks in the second round, Jackson announced his resignation as Lakers head coach, paving the way for the management to introduce Mike Brown. In the following seasons, the Lakers were still actively adjusting their lineup, introducing Steve Nash and Dwight Howard, and hiring former Phoenix Suns coach Mike D'Anthony to coach for a brief period, but these efforts are still not enough to get the team to the top again. The Lakers' future became even more uncertain on February 18, 2013, with Jerry Bass passing away at the age of 80 after 18 months of fighting cancer. A month before his death, the Lakers were valued at $1 billion, second only to the New York Knicks ($1.1 billion), ranking second in the NBA.

Although Buss' death shocked the entire Lakers and even the entire league, he had already made arrangements for the team's continuation. He distributed his 66% controlling stake to 11 children and appointed Jenny Buss as the Lakers' team representative in the league meeting (i.e., the team's president/chairman). This decision ensured that the Lakers were still under the control of the Bass family.

Post Kobe Era

When Kobe Bryant ended his career, he ended in a way that only he knew, scoring 60 points against the Utah Jazz and shooting 50 shots, setting a record for the highest score in NBA history for players to score in retirement battles. He scored 37 points in the first three quarters, broke out completely in the final quarter, scoring 23 points for 16 shots, while the Jazz only scored 21 points in the whole quarter. The game ignited the entire arena and became one of the few highlights during that bleak period of the Lakers, especially after he recovered from a devastating Achilles tendon tear.

For the Lakers, the word "trough" needs to be looked at in quotes, but missing the playoffs for five consecutive years is a difficult time for any team, especially for a giant that missed the playoffs only five times in the first 64 years of history. During this period, the Lakers continued to try to introduce more star players to Los Angeles, until the joining of LeBron James in 2018 finally brought a turning point.

From 2013 to 2018, the Lakers ranked third from the bottom in the league, at only 34.8%. But they also fully played the role of the scouting system during this low period and accumulated a lot of potential new stars through the draft. Over the past ten to fifteen years, a group of eye-catching rookies have appeared in purple and gold jerseys, including Julius Randle, Brandon Ingram, Lonzo Ball, Jordan Clarkson, Ivica Zubac and Larry Nance Jr.

Although these players are hard to be regarded as superstars who can change the fate of the team, their development is eye-catching enough to lay the foundation for the Lakers to reshape the lineup. This not only prompted LeBron James to decide to go west to Los Angeles, but also allowed the Lakers to build a championship lineup around him, opening the last window for the championship under the Buss family.

New Star Power

When the Lakers traded Anthony Davis on July 6, 2019, the team's championship hopes were rekindled, continuing the long tradition of this giant's chasing championships. The combination of Davis and James helped the Lakers reestablish their championship status, and it all happened in one of the most challenging seasons in league history. On January 25, 2020, James surpassed Kobe and rose to third in the NBA's all-time total score list. However, the celebration was fleeting, and several hours later, Kobe was unfortunately killed in a helicopter accident.

The Lakers turn grief into motivation to pursue the 17th (and most recent) championship in the NBA bubble park in Orlando, Florida. James once again showed his kingly appearance in the finals that year, becoming the first player in NBA history to win the MVP of the Finals on three different teams. Davis also established his position in the history of the league with his comprehensive dominance on both offense and defense. Together with legendary stars such as James, Kobe, Magic Johnson, and Jabbar, he was selected as the list of the best players in the NBA's 75th anniversary history.

Davis's joining not only helped the Lakers return to the championship ranks, but also paved the way for a subsequent big deal that was enough to rewrite the team's history. On February 2, 2025, the Lakers completed a shocking deal with another superstar Luca Doncic, bringing Doncic to Los Angeles with Davis as the core chip. This deal perfectly interprets the original intention of the Bass family to take over the Lakers. Although wealth is important, what really determines success or failure is foresight. The Hollywood spotlight has an irresistible attraction to any big-name star, and it is difficult to find another team that can strike such a perfect balance between entertainment, star effect and competitive results like the Lakers.

And behind all these achievements, the Lakers, one of the world's most influential basketball clubs, still maintained a nearly family workshop operating model until this week. Now, this pattern has been broken, and at an astonishing valuation of $10 billion, the Lakers were sold to Mark Walter, the major shareholder of the Los Angeles Dodgers, setting a trading record in sports history.

Where will the Lakers go in the next few years? Doncic will soon receive a maximum salary contract renewal. JJ Reddick is quickly making his mark in the coaching circle, and James, who is nearly fortunate, is still the league's most box office superstar. At the same time, the upcoming new version of the labor and capital agreement in the NBA will also have an impact on the team's construction facilities, and the newly added second luxury tax line clause is destined to be the biggest obstacle to any big operation.

Walter must adapt to the unique challenges of an NBA team in terms of salary building. Unlike baseball, basketball's salary cap system and duplicate luxury tax clauses make the road to winning streaks even harder. It is more challenging to retain superstars in the long run. After all, opportunities outside the basketball court are equally attractive for today's players. Business territory, brand cooperation and cross-border development have long become an important part of their careers.

Although there have been constant complaints about small-market teams in recent years and criticisms of boring games have emerged one after another, it is undeniable that the NBA has established an incomparable influence system in the world.

And without the careful construction of the Lakers by the Bass family over the past decades, nothing could have been achieved. They have gradually built the Lakers into the world's top sports brand, not only dominating the entire league in terms of culture, market and influence.

Even Magic Johnson's most exciting record without watching the ball can hardly match their vision and courage.