Los Angeles' 10 Greatest Athletes
Note that this includes Anaheim (Angels 1965-present, Rams 1980-94, Ducks 1993-present), Inglewood (Lakers 1967-99, Kings 1967-99, and the Rams and Chargers will start playing there in 2020), and Carson (Galaxy 2003-present).
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Dodgers in the Baseball Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make this Top 10: Duke Snider (the one holdover from the Brooklyn years who qualifies for both places), Don Drysdale, Don Sutton, Eddie Murray and Mike Piazza.
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Angels in the Baseball Hall of Fame: Nolan Ryan, Rod Carew, Reggie Jackson and Vladimir Guerrero -- any of whom would have made the Top 10 had they spent their entire careers in L.A. (or Anaheim).
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Rams in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make this Top 10: Bob Waterfield, Tom Fears, Elroy "Crazy Legs" Hirsch, Norm Van Brocklin, Les Richter, Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Tom Mack, Jack Youngblood, Jackie Slater, Eric Dickerson and Kevin Greene.
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Raiders in the Pro Football Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make this Top 10: Ray Guy, Howie Long, Marcus Allen and Mike Haynes. Ted Hendricks peaked in Oakland, but was still around for the Raiders' win in Super Bowl XVIII, as an L.A. team.
When The Sporting News named its 100 Greatest Football Players in 1999, Olsen was ranked 25th, Dickerson 38th, Allen 72nd and Hirsch 89th. When the NFL Network named its 100 Greatest Players in 2000, Olsen dropped slightly to 27th, Dickerson dropped a bit to 52, Van Brocklin got onto the list at 83rd, Allen dropped a bit to 85th, and Hirsch rose slightly to 87th.
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Lakers in the Basketball Hall of Fame, who did not otherwise make this Top 10: Elgin Baylor, Gail Goodrich, Jamaal Wilkes, Bob McAdoo and James Worthy. Baylor and Worthy were also named to the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.
Honorable Mention to Blake Griffin and Chris Paul, likely to become the 1st and 2nd players (if not necessarily in that order) to reach the Basketball Hall of Fame based on what they did with the Los Angeles Clippers.
No player who played more than 1 season for them has yet reached the Basketball Hall of Fame. Bill Walton counts from their years as the San Diego Clippers, and Bob McAdoo does from their time as the Buffalo Braves, but not for L.A.
Honorable Mention to Los Angeles Kings in the Hockey Hall of Fame: Rogie Vachon, Marcel Dionne, Larry Murphy, Luc Robitaille, Wayne Gretzky, Rob Blake and Jari Kurri.
Honorable Mention to Anaheim Ducks in the Hockey Hall of Fame: Paul Kariya, Scott Niedermayer and Teemu Salanne. Jari Kurri, Adam Oates, Sergei Fedorov and Chris Pronger also played for the Ducks and have made the Hall, but, between them, played just 7 seasons for the team.
Honorable Mention to Soccer Legends Derek Dougan and Phil Parkes (1967 Wolves), George Best (1976-78 Aztecs), Johan Cruijff (1978-79 Aztecs), David Beckham (2007-12 Galaxy), Steven Gerrard (2015-16 Galaxy), and Ashley Cole and Zlatan Ibrahimovic (current Galaxy). Los Angelenos didn't get to see these guys at their best, but they did get to call them their own. No, Robbie Keane does not count as a legend.
Honorable Mention to U.S. Soccer Stars who played for the LA Galaxy: Cobi Jones (1996-2007), Alexi Lalas (2001-04), and Landon Donovan (2005-16).
10. Wayne Gretzky, center, Los Angeles Kings, 1988-96. Counting only what he did for the Kings: 246 goals, their 1st trip to the Stanley Cup Finals, and the 1st nationwide attention in franchise history. Vachon and Dionne couldn't provide that, even though they did more for the Kings, and for longer.
The Kings (as did the entire league) retired his Number 99, and a statue of him stands outside the Staples Center (in addition to the one as outside Edmonton's Northlands Coliseum).
9. Wilt Chamberlain, center, Los Angeles Lakers, 1968-73. He only played 5 seasons in Los Angeles, the last 5 of his career. They reached the Conference Finals in all 5, the NBA Finals in 4, and won the 1972 NBA Championship with a then-record 69 regular-season wins, including a 33-game winning streak, the longest in the history of North American major league sports.
His Number 13 has been retired by the University of Kansas, the Harlem Globetrotters, the Golden State Warriors, the Philadelphia 76ers, and the Lakers. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. He is the greatest basketball player who ever lived, and I don't want to hear about no His Airness.
8. Merlin Olsen, defensive tackle, Los Angeles Rams, 1962-76. Your generation might not know him at all. My generation knew him as a color commentator on NBC's NFL broadcasts, as an actor on Little House On the Prairie and Father Murphy, and, perhaps incongruously, as a commercial pitchman for FTD florists. Before that, he was one of the best defensive tackles ever.
He was NFL Rookie of the Year in 1962, the 1st of 14 Pro Bowl seasons. He, Deacon Jones, Rosey Grier and Lamar Lundy formed the Los Angeles Rams defensive line that became known as the Fearsome Foursome. (The San Diego Chargers actually used that first, but they were in San Diego and the AFL, not Hollywood and the NFL.)
7. Shaquille O'Neal, center, Los Angeles Lakers, 1996-2004. He became a 15-time NBA All-Star, being named MVP of the All-Star Game 3 times. With the Orlando Magic, he was 1993 Rookie of the Year, and led them to the 1995 NBA Eastern Conference title, winning the NBA's scoring title. Orlando proved too small for him, and he signed with the Los Angeles Lakers as a free agent for the 1996-97 season.
At the 1997 All-Star Game in Cleveland, he was honored as one of the league's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players. He was injured, and didn't show up. When his name was announced, he was booed. (Patrick Ewing was also selected, and injured. He showed up, was announced, and was cheered.) And in his 1st 3 seasons in L.A., which were also Kobe Bryant's 1st 3, Shaq couldn't get them into the NBA Finals. His legacy was at stake.
Whether you think the Lakers benefited from officials' calls or not, the results are there to read. In 2000, he led the league in scoring again, was named regular season MVP, and took the Lakers to the NBA Championship. He took them to 3 straight, 2000-02, and was given the Bill Russell Award as Finals MVP all 3 times. Eventually, after the Lakers lost the 2004 Finals, it became clear that he and Kobe could no longer work together, and Shaq got his wish and got out.
He won another title in 2006 with Dwyane Wade, Alonzo Mourning, Gary Payton and the Miami Heat. The rest of his career was less dramatic, making single-season stops in Phoenix, Cleveland and Boston, before retiring in 2011, as the last active member of the 50 Greatest Players. He was elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame, has a statue outside the Staples Center, and has the rare distinction of 3 different numbers retired: 33 by LSU, 34 by the Lakers, and 32 by the Heat. (Oddly, the Magic haven't yet retired his 32.)
He tried his enormous hand at acting and rapping. Well, let's just say it's a good thing he kept his "day job."
Kobe became The Man in L.A., as had Bob Waterfield, Sandy Koufax, Jerry West, Steve Garvey, Magic Johnson and Shaq before him. He recently became the 1st U.S. athlete to have 2 different uniform numbers retired by the same team: The 8 he wore until 2006, and the 24 he wore thereafter. I suppose it's like what's been said about Rickey Henderson: If you split his career in 2, you would have 2 Hall-of-Famers. He becomes eligible for the Hall next year.
Of course, it could be argued that his career should have been cut in half. After all, what he was accused of doing in Colorado was worse than what Ray Rice did in Atlantic City. Kobe was lucky that, whatever happened, it happened before the era of "Me Too."
5. David "Deacon" Jones, defensive end, Los Angeles Rams, 1961-71. He led the "Fearsome Foursome" defensive line with Olsen, Rosey Grier and Lamar Lundy. "The Secretary of Defense" made 8 Pro Bowls. In 1967 and 1968, he was named NFL Defensive Player of the Year.
He changed the game in 3 different ways. Because of him, at 6-foot-5 and 265 pounds, defensive ends were now expected to be both big and fast. He was the original Reggie White. Because of him, the headslap -- slapping your hand on the earhole on an opponent's helmet -- was banned, and, given what we now know about head injuries, this was a good thing.
Most of all, he changed the terminology of the sport. He thought that defensive players needed a statistic. Until Deacon, tackling the quarterback behind the line of scrimmage was called nothing more than that: A tackle behind the line of scrimmage. He thought of tossing a burlap sack over the quarterback, and created the term "sack" for the action.
Although the NFL did not officially keep record of sacks until 1982, examination of game films suggests he had 173 1/2 for his career, which would have made him the all-time leader, although he would since have been surpassed by White and Bruce Smith.
He was named to the Pro Football Hall of Fame and the NFL's 1960s All-Decade and 75th Anniversary All-Time Teams. The Rams retired his Number 75. In 1999, The Sporting News ranked him 13th on their list of the 100 Greatest Football Players. In 2010, the NFL Network listed him 15th on their 100 Greatest Players. He lived long enough to see all these distinctions. When he died in 2013, the NFL instituted the Deacon Jones Award, given to the League leader in sacks.
4. Jerry West, guard, Los Angeles Lakers, 1960-74. "Mr. Clutch" got West Virginia University into the NCAA Final Four in 1959, the U.S. team to the Gold Medal at the 1960 Olympics in Rome (that entire team was collectively elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame), and the Lakers into the NBA Finals 9 times, although they only won once, in 1972. He was named Most Valuable Player of the 1969 Finals, even though the Lakers lost.
He was an All-Star in all 14 seasons in which he played in the NBA, and became known as one of the best shooters, and one of the best passers, in NBA history. And he is "The Logo": In 1969, Alan Siegel, following up his design of the Major League Baseball logo that bears a resemblance to Harmon Killebrew, used a photograph by Wen Roberts, of West dribbling with his left hand, to design the NBA logo.
After going 1-for-9 in the Finals as a player, he now has 12 rings as an executive -- his 13 titles the most of anybody in NBA history except for longtime Boston Celtics head coach, general manager and team president Red Auerbach, who won 16. So if we're talking about the greatest sports figure for Los Angeles, it could be West.
His Number 44 has been retired by both WVU and the Lakers, and statues of him are outside the WVU Coliseum in Morgantown and the Staples Center. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.
3. Sandy Koufax, pitcher, Los Angeles Dodgers, 1958-66, plus 1955-57 in Brooklyn. For the 1st third of his career, he struggled. For the 2nd third, he may have been, by the standard of peak performance, the best pitcher ever. And we never got to see the last third, which is why he doesn't rank higher on this list.
He was a 7-time All-Star. A rookie on the Dodgers' 1955 World Series winners in Brooklyn, he didn't make the Series roster. He was on their roster for their 1959 win, and was the key figure in their 1963 and 1965 wins. He was the 1963 NL MVP, and won the Cy Young Award in 1963, '65 and '66 -- 3 of the last 4 seasons when it was still an award for the most valuable pitcher in both leagues.
His total of 382 strikeouts in 1965 remains a record for National League pitchers, and for all lefthanded pitchers. He pitched a no-hitter every year from 1962 to '65, the last a perfect game. As the biggest Jewish sports star of his time, he refused to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur, turning him from big star to all-time icon. The Dodgers lost it. Then he lost Game 2. Then he pitched a shutout in Game 5. Then he pitched a shutout to win Game 7 -- only Jack Morris in 1991 has done that since. Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year for 1965. He swept the World Series MVPs in both 1963 and '65.
At the close of the 1966 season, his career records were 165-87, a 2.79 ERA, and 2,396 strikeouts. But his elbow was in terrible pain, and he didn't like the idea of all those cortisone shots. Unlike Denny McLain when he was faced with the same decision a few years later, Koufax decided enough was enough, and retired shortly before his 31st birthday.
He was the youngest man ever elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, at 36. The Dodgers retired his Number 32. He was named to the MLB All-Time Team in 1969, and in 1999 was named to the MLB All-Century Team and Number 26 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players.
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, center, Los Angeles Lakers, 1975-89. The greatest college basketball player of all time, and this was also in Los Angeles, he went 88-2 at UCLA, and won the National Championship, the National Player of the Year, and the NCAA Tournament Most Outstanding Player all 3 years: 1967, '68 and '69. Not 4, but not because he left early; rather, because freshmen weren't eligible until 1972.
1970 NBA Rookie of the Year. 1971, '72, '74, '76, '77 and '80 NBA MVP. 19-time All-Star. 1971 NBA Champion with the Milwaukee Bucks. 1980, '82, '85, '87 and '88 NBA Champion with the Los Angeles Lakers. That's 6 titles, and twice, 1971 and 1985 -- 14 years apart -- he was named MVP of the NBA Finals. Sports Illustrated named him Sportsman of the Year for 1985.
He is the NBA's all-time leader in minutes played, field goals made, and points scored in both the regular season and the Playoffs -- ahead of Bill Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant and LeBron James.
He was 1 of the top 5 players in the NBA at the moment he entered, at age 22. He was 1 of the top 5 players in the NBA at age 40. He may be 1 of the top 5 players in NBA history. His Number 33 has been retired by UCLA, the Bucks and the Lakers. He was an easy choice for the Basketball Hall of Fame and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players, and he has a statue outside the Staples Center.
President Barack Obama awarded him the nation's highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 2016. (At the same ceremony, he also honored another New York native best known for working in sports in Los Angeles, Vin Scully.) He is the greatest athlete ever produced by New York City. "Roger, Roger."
But he's not quite the greatest athlete ever to play for a Los Angeles team. He might be, if he'd been a Laker his entire pro career. This is certainly true of Wilt. But this guy did spend his entire pro career with the Lakers:
1. Earvin "Magic" Johnson, guard, Los Angeles Lakers, 1979-92, with a brief comeback in 1996. He was drafted by the Lakers, who already had Kareem, forcing him to switch from Number 33, which he wore while leading Michigan State to the National Championship, to 32. The Lakers reached the 1980 NBA Finals, and when Kareem was hurt for Game 6, Magic, though 6-foot-9 was by then short for a center, moved from point guard, and torched the Philadelphia 76ers for 42 points on their own court, and won the title.
He also helped the Lakers win the NBA Championship in 1982 (again against the 76ers), 1985 (against the Celtics of Larry Bird, whose Indiana State team he beat for the 1979 NCAA title), 1987 (against Bird again) and 1988 (against the Detroit Pistons). He was named Finals MVP (now named the Bill Russell Award) in 1980, 1982 and 1987. They also reached the Finals in 1983, 1984, 1989 and 1991. He became the all-time assists leader, a record since broken by John Stockton. He was a 12-time All-Star, and a 2-time All-Star Game MVP.
Just before the 1991-92 season could begin, Magic announced he was retiring, because he'd been diagnosed with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He was nonetheless selected to that season's All-Star Game, and showed he still had his A-game, and was named the Game's MVP. He was named to the "Dream Team" that stormed to victory at the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. Even then, he couldn't stay away, briefly coaching the Lakers in 1994 (not well) and briefly returning as a player in 1996 (ditto).
Michigan State retired his Number 33. The Lakers retired his Number 32 and dedicated a statue of him outside the Forum, since moved to the Staples Center. He was named to the Basketball Hall of Fmae and the NBA's 50th Anniversary 50 Greatest Players.
More than that, before he retired, he was already investing wisely, and had founded a chain of movie theaters, all in historically black neighborhoods, including on Harlem's iconic 125th Street. Not long before his diagnosis was announced, but right after Michael Jordan had led the Chicago Bulls to their 1st NBA Championship (beating Magic and the Lakers in the Finals), Magic said, "If Michael were doing what I'm doing, he really would own the world."
Magic's holdings now include a minority share of the Lakers, and the majority ownership of baseball's Los Angeles Dodgers, now defending National League Champions. Earvin Johnson still has a magic touch.
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