In this ongoing series, we will take a trip to yesteryear to highlight some Los Angeles Lakers players whom some fans may have forgotten. These players didn’t get the billing that some others enjoyed, but they were very instrumental to the Lakers’ success.
During the height of the Showtime era of the 1980s, the Lakers were arguably the greatest team in NBA history. But even as they won championship after championship, they were still accused by the East Coast media of being soft. Yet they were coached by the very un-soft Pat Riley, and they had some role players who gave them the macho presentation Riley championed when they needed it.
Buy Lakers TicketsOne of them was power forward A. C. Green.
Green embraced the dirty work for the Lakers
In 1985, the Lakers finally beat the Boston Celtics for the NBA championship. In doing so, it looked like they had finally shed the false narrative that they were a soft team that was only concerned with the offensive end. Riley had instilled a new emphasis on defense, rebounding and physical play that season, and it paid off big-time.
Yet they still had a lack of big men who could execute that vision. Starting power forward Kurt Rambis was very willing to do so, but he was very limited offensively and perhaps a bit undersized. That’s why L.A. took Green in the first round of the draft that year.
By the early weeks of his second season, he had supplanted Rambis in the starting lineup and was emerging into a somewhat enhanced version of Rambis. Like the man he replaced, Green took on the role of playing low-post defense, boxing out, getting physical and mixing it up inside. At 6-foot-9, he weighed just 220 pounds, but he wasn’t afraid of even the biggest enforcers.
But unlike Rambis, Green was fleet-footed and could get out on the fast break and finish it with a powerful dunk. He also developed a reliable 15-20 foot jump shot that helped space the floor for Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul–Jabbar and James Worthy.
With Green becoming a valuable role player, L.A. won it all in 1987 and 1988. During the 1989-90 season, he averaged 12.9 points and 8.7 rebounds a game and somehow beat out superstar Karl Malone to become the starter on the Western Conference All-Star team.
The good times ended for the Lakers at the start of the 1991-92 campaign when Johnson retired after finding out he had tested positive for HIV. Green responded by putting up a then-career-high 13.6 points per contest and helping them miraculously reach the playoffs even after Worthy, Vlade Divac and Sam Perkins all suffered significant injuries late in the year.
But without Johnson, L.A. was forced to start a long-term rebuilding process. Green spent one more season with it, then left to join the Phoenix Suns in 1993. Showtime was long gone, and the team headed into a very uncertain time.
Green returned to help a new era of Lakers stars win it all
While the Lakers started embracing what was thought to be a long and drawn-out rebuilding process, Green was able to contend for another title with the Suns. But he never got past the second round in his three and a half seasons there, and his time with the Dallas Mavericks afterward was fairly dismal, as those Mavs never even reached the postseason.
By 1999, the Lakers were title contenders again, but they were too undeveloped, incomplete and immature to get over the hump. After getting swept in the playoffs in back-to-back years, they hired Phil Jackson to be their head coach and savior. Jackson preferred veterans, and he knew this Lakers team badly needed some, so it brought Green back for one final year.
With him grabbing rebounds, playing defense and hitting long 2-pointers, the Lakers won another world championship, this time with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.
Green would play the following season with the Miami Heat, allowing him to reunite with coach Riley, before retiring. In addition to his three championship rings, he retired with an amazing feat: the longest streak of consecutive games played in NBA history at 1,192. That streak began early in the 1986-87 season and stretched all the way to the end of his career.
In 16 seasons, he ended up missing just three regular season games. All of them came early in the 1986-87 campaign, right before his streak commenced.
