Los Angeles Lakers: Greatest NBA Finals performances in team history

The Los Angeles Lakers have as much history as any other sports franchise in the world and have seen some phenomenal NBA Finals performances in the process.

The Los Angeles Lakers may be in a down period in their history, but don’t forget they are one of the NBA’s storied franchises. They remain the only NBA team to have contested an NBA Final in every decade in the league’s existence.

Those yearly playoff marches through May and June have yielded 16 NBA titles in 31 appearances that have provided Lakers fans from the old barns in Minneapolis to the glitz and glamour of Los Angeles with countless memories.

Those memories are even more indelible thanks to the superstars who have worn the Lakers uniform, their roster of all-time greats has put on some of the greatest performances in the NBA Finals.

These are the top ten performances by Lakers in an NBA Finals game.

Ground Rules

Just wanted to set some ground rules or criteria of what really made a great performance in the NBA Finals. To start this list only includes how a player did in a particular game, maybe some someday we’ll tackle a whole series but “not today.”

Though the Lakers history goes back to their days playing in Minneapolis in the ’40s and ’50s, there won’t be much to include from that period. This is mostly due to the lack of statistics other than points from that era.

Also, you’ll notice I will include game score when applicable, this is a stat used by the analytics field that takes into account points, rebounds, field goals, steals, assists, blocked shots weighs them while subtracting from weighted negative stats turnovers, personal fouls, field goals attempted. It’s not a perfect measure but it gives you some idea to how good of a game the player had.

One other thing that will give weight to the choices will be just which game was in the series, did it come in a game one versus a title-clinching game or game seven will decide how important it is.