Through the 2024-25 season, the Los Angeles Lakers have had a total of 506 players suit up for them, going back to their days in Minneapolis. Some were forgettable, some were serviceable, some were good and a select few were flat-out legendary.
As the Lakers approach their 80th season of existence (they were founded back in 1946 as the Detroit Gems in the National Basketball League), LeBron Wire is taking a look at each player who has worn their jersey, whether it has been a purple and gold one or the ones they donned back in the Midwest during their early years.
The 2004 trade that sent Shaquille O’Neal to the Miami Heat was a major shock to the system for Lakers fans. It marked the end of the team’s budding dynasty and started a very uncertain rebuilding project around Kobe Bryant. At the time, the consensus was that the Lakers had made a huge mistake and didn’t get fair value for O’Neal, even though the Hall of Fame center was clearly in decline.
In return, they got Lamar Odom, Caron Butler and Brian Grant for O’Neal. Odom was seen as the biggest piece, as he was one of the NBA’s most uniquely gifted players. At 6-foot-10, he could rebound, handle the ball in the open court, hit the open man, score and even defend a little bit. In fact, when he came into the league as the No. 4 pick in the 1999 draft, some had even compared him to Magic Johnson.
In his first three seasons with the Lakers, Odom was miscast as Bryant’s sidekick out of necessity because of their very thin roster. While he had the talent and skills to average at least 20 points a game, he saw himself as a glorified role player who wanted to simply fill in the blanks across the board to help his team win.
But in February 2008, the team landed another Hall of Fame big man in Pau Gasol, who was very capable of being the No. 2 scoring option on an elite team. That trade allowed Odom to play his natural game, and the Lakers immediately started to thrive.
They went to the NBA Finals three straight times and captured back-to-back NBA championships in 2009 and 2010, including one over their archrivals, the Boston Celtics. Odom was named the Sixth Man of the Year for the 2010-11 season.
He was then included in the failed trade for Chris Paul in December 2011. After that deal didn’t go through, he was inconsolable, and L.A. hastily sent him to the Dallas Mavericks. Odom’s final season came with the Los Angeles Clippers, the team that originally drafted him, during the 2012-13 campaign.
He ended up with career averages of 13.3 points, 8.4 rebounds, 3.7 assists, 0.9 steals and 0.9 blocks, and while with the Purple and Gold, he put up 13.7 points and 9.5 rebounds per contest.