Los Angeles Lakers: Ranking the 3 greatest duos in franchise history
By Zane Harris
With some of the best players to ever play the game coming from their franchise, who are the greatest duos of all-time for the Los Angeles Lakers?
The Lakers arguably have the best player pool when looking at team history in the entire NBA. From their inception to today there have been few times that the team has not had a top-five player in the league on their roster.
Often times, the Lakers pair that star with another great player to form a dynamic duo and line the rest of the roster with role players that compliment the games of the two stars. Today, I will be analyzing and ranking the top 3 Lakers duos of all time. In this ranking, things like rings, how the team performed, the overall performances of the two players in the duo, and the amount of talent that the two players in the duo had.
To begin, an honorable mention that did not quite make the list, however, needed to be included was the duo of Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. The two played together on the Lakers for a part of the 2007-2008 season through the 2013-2014 season.
As many know, Pau was traded onto the team from the Memphis Grizzlies in return for his brother Marc Gasol. In those five full years together, Kobe and Pau combined for 10 All-Star appearances, two all NBA third teams, two all NBA second teams, one all NBA defensive second team, four all NBA defensive first teams, and six all NBA first teams.
On top of this, they brought home the two most recent championships that Laker fans have seen, defeating the Dwight Howard led Orlando Magic in the 2009 finals and repeating against the Boston Celtics in the 2010 finals.
The games of Kobe and Pau complimented each other so well, and Pau was the perfect player to play alongside Kobe. He was a very low ego and non-confrontational player. On top of this, he took Kobe’s trials that many would have seen as hazing and used it as motivation to be a better player just like Kobe intended.