{"id":749361,"date":"2026-06-01T04:24:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:24:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/749361\/"},"modified":"2026-06-01T04:24:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-01T04:24:14","slug":"lakers-jersey-history-no-42-james-worthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/749361\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers jersey history No. 42 \u2014 James Worthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Through the 2024-25 season, the Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

During the Lakers’ 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.<\/p>\n

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The Lakers won two of the first three NBA championships of the 1980s, and in 1982, after their second title of the decade, they had a major stroke of good fortune. Thanks to a trade they made a couple of years before, they had the No. 1 pick in the draft, which they acquired from the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>. They could’ve taken Dominique Wilkins, who went on to make nine All-Star teams and win a scoring title, but they instead went with 6-foot-9 forward James Worthy, who had just helped lead the University of North Carolina to the NCAA title.<\/p>\n

Worthy was integrated gradually into the Lakers’ frontcourt, but by his third season, he was a regular starter and a blossoming star. When the team won the 1985 world championship against the Celtics<\/a>, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the NBA Finals MVP, but Worthy was a thorn in the Celtics’ side by averaging 23.7 points a game in the series.<\/p>\n

It was the first sign that he was a genuine playoff riser, as well as the beginning of him earning the nickname “Big Game James.” In Game 7 of the 1988 NBA Finals, he posted 36 points, 16 rebounds and 10 assists as Los Angeles<\/a> won back-to-back titles and its fifth title of the 1980s by downing the Detroit Pistons<\/a>. As Abdul-Jabbar aged, Worthy became a bigger part of L.A.’s offense, and the team went to him more and more.<\/p>\n

In all, Worthy played 12 seasons in the league, all of them with the Lakers, and made the All-Star team seven straight times. He retired with a career average of 17.6 points a game in the regular season and 21.1 points a game in the playoffs and was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2003. While he didn’t have quite the same lofty aura as Abdul-Jabbar or Magic Johnson, his place in Lakers lore as a pillar of the Showtime era is unmistakable.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Lakers jersey history No. 42 \u2014 James Worthy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Through the 2024-25 season, the Los Angeles Lakers have had a total of 506 players suit up for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":749362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,12217,46,193,33982,188,11904,1194,615,251,150,1913,6,7289,11],"class_list":["post-749361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba-playoffs","tag-basketball","tag-big-game-james","tag-celtics","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-detroit-gems","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-dominique-wilkins","tag-james-worthy","tag-kareem-abdul-jabbar","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-national-basketball-league","tag-nba","tag-nba-finals-mvp","tag-nba-playoffs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116672951979124872","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=749361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/749361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/749362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=749361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=749361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=749361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}