The Lakers organization won their 15th NBA title last week. Congratulations to them. 15 titles out of 63 years (24%) is outstanding.
Today I would like to offer up some fun facts about the Lakers and the Celtics.
Lakers - 15 titles 24%
Celtics - 17 titles 27%
all other teams - 31 titles 49%
Comparing their titles:
- 9 of the Celtics came against the Lakers
- 2 of the Lakers came against the Celtics
- the Celtics' oppositions in the finals for the 17 titles had 38 Hall of Fame players (each year for same player counts additively, for pending or active players, assumed Dwight Howard, Kobe, Jason Kidd, Allen Iverson and Reggie Miller make the HOF)
- the Lakers' oppositions in the finals for the 15 titles had 29 Hall of Fame players
- the most HOF players the Celtics faced in a single Championship year was 4, twice it happened:
1957 against St.Louis (Cliff Hagen, Slater Martin, Ed Macauley, and Bob Pettit)
1984 against the Lakers (Kareem, Magic, Worthy and McAdoo)
- the most HOF players the Lakers faced in a single Championship year was 6:
1972 against the Knicks (Bill Bradley, Walt Frazier, Willis Reed, Dave Debusschere, Earl Monroe, Jerry Lucas)
- in 3 of the Celtics' 17 titles, the opponents had 1 or no HOF players on the team:
2008 - Kobe
1986 - Olajuwan
1976 none (Pat Riley played on Suns, in HOF for coaching)
- in 8 of the 15 Lakers' titles, the opponents had 1 or no HOF players on the team:
2009 - Dwight Howard (assumed)
2002 - Jason Kidd (assumed)
2001 - Allen Iverson (assumed)
2000 - Reggie Miller (assumed)
1982 - Dr. J
1980 - Dr. J
1954 - Dolph Schayes
1949 - none
- overall Celtics regular season record in 63 years, 2922 wins and 1999 losses .594 winning percentage
- overall Lakers regular season record in 61 years, 2970 wins and 1841 losses .617 winning percentage
Hall of Fame comparisons:
- The Celtics have had 23 current HOF players play for them
- The Lakers have had 15 current HOF players play for them
- The Celtics 23 HOF players played 169 seasons for the Celtics
- The Lakers 15 HOF players played 124 seasons for the Lakers
- The Celtics had at least one HOF player on their roster from the 1950-51 season through 1994-95 season
- The Lakers had at least one HOF player on their roster from the 1948-49 season through 1995-96 season
Current or pending HOF's :
-Celtics - Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen
-Lakers - Kobe, Shaq, Karl Malone, Gary Payton
Head to Head:
- have played each other 270 times, Celtics have won 151, Lakers 119.
Greatest Player Ever in my opinion:
- Celtics: I would say Larry Bird (many would say Russell, I get that, greatest winner)
- Lakers : I would say Kareem (totally underappreciated IMO relative to what he was/did)
Great stuff, dude. how do you find all these facts?
ReplyDeleteAnd btw, bold move in picking Bird over Russell.
got a bunch of them from the basketball version of www.baseball-reference.com
ReplyDeleteTook me a lunch hour the other day to pull the HOFers on the teams each played in the finals but the rest was easy.
Bird was my favorite and my idol growing up. Easy choice for me, hard part was asking myself if it was the correct choice.
On the basketball-reference.com site they have a metric called winshares, I assume it is like the metric of the same name that Bill James created for baseball. Bird was significantly higher than any other Celtic in history. In fact, Robert Parish was 2nd on the list.
For the Lakers it was Kareem by a nose ahead of Magic, Kobe is coming up in 3rd though.
Love the Baseball/basketball/football reference sites. Not a total stat geek, but its great to see the numbers of Rizzuto or Oscar Robertson of whoever.
ReplyDeleteI have no problem with Bird, just that some other people might.