Los Angeles Lakers: Best players in team history who started elsewhere

1. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Is there a more iconic Laker who wasn’t a part of one of the club’s five most recent championships? Probably not.

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar doesn’t get the credit he deserves as one of the truly transcendent talents ever to play NBA basketball. Between his gaudy stats and patented skyhook, there just wasn’t any slowing down the freakishly athletic and relentless center who carried success around with him like a ball and chain.

The crazy part is that he often gets overlooked in the GOAT conversation. At this point, it’s pretty much between Michael Jordan and LeBron. Well, as it so happens, the NBA was in existence well before either of them was crushing the hopes and dreams of his opponents.

Here’s a stat for you: Abdul-Jabbar played for 20 seasons and was an All-Star in all but one. Beyond that, he was named to the All-NBA team 15 times, All-Defensive team 11 times, MVP six times, won six rings and is still the NBA’s all-time leading scorer by a fairly wide margin. It’ll take more than 7,000 points for James to catch Kareem.

From the moment Abdul-Jabbar stepped on the court for the Milwaukee Bucks as the first overall pick in 1969, he was a superstar. Much like Chamberlain, he immediately took to setting the stat sheet on fire. Although not to the same degree, they played in different eras of NBA basketball. No matter how you try to spin it, though, there’s no denying that KAJ was a generational talent.

Abdul-Jabbar eventually came to Los Angeles via trade in 1975, at which point he became a bona fide superstar for the Lakers. In only his first year with the team, he was breaking records, starting on-court fights and making opponents look like middle schoolers.

Although it took a couple of years for him to turn the Lakers into legitimate contenders, he rewarded them with eight Finals appearances and five titles before retiring. Suffice it to say, Kareem’s stamp on the franchise will never wear off regardless of where his career started.