{"id":752257,"date":"2026-06-04T12:42:14","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/752257\/"},"modified":"2026-06-04T12:42:14","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T12:42:14","slug":"lakers-jersey-history-no-43-mychal-thompson","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/752257\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers jersey history No. 43 \u2014 Mychal Thompson"},"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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While the Lakers won NBA championships in 1980, 1982 and 1985, by the 1986-87 season, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was finally starting to show his age. In addition, they had always lacked a quality backup for him, and the power forward position had been a relative weakness for them throughout the decade.<\/p>\n

They addressed all those issues with one move when, midway through the 1986-87 campaign, they sent Frank Brickowski, P\u00e9tur Gu\u00f0mundsson and two future draft picks to the San Antonio Spurs<\/a> for big man Mychal Thompson. Thompson was the No. 1 pick in the 1978 draft, and while he had never been an All-Star, he had put up strong scoring and rebounding numbers from year to year.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-10 Bahamian native quickly became a fixture for the Lakers, and having played with Kevin McHale in college, he knew how to contain the Hall of Fame Boston Celtics<\/a> power forward. Los Angeles<\/a> zoomed to a 65-17 record and defeated the Celtics in six games in the NBA Finals in 1987, and it then pushed past the Detroit Pistons<\/a> in the 1988 championship series to become the first team in nearly 20 years to repeat as NBA champions.<\/p>\n

Thompson stayed with the Lakers until he retired from the NBA in 1991, and he averaged 8.9 points and 5.4 rebounds in 22.8 minutes a game during his time with the Purple and Gold. Overall, he had career league averages of 13.7 points and 7.4 rebounds a game.<\/p>\n

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In modern times, he is known as the Lakers’ color commentator for radio broadcasts, and he has also served as a co-host on multiple radio talk shows in the L.A. market.<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: Lakers jersey history No. 43 \u2014 Mychal Thompson<\/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":752258,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[7,75,5918,33982,188,615,251,150,7177,1913,6,92420,474],"class_list":["post-752257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-basketball","tag-boston-celtics","tag-championship-series","tag-detroit-gems","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-kareem-abdul-jabbar","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-mychal-thompson","tag-national-basketball-league","tag-nba","tag-petur-gudmundsson","tag-san-antonio-spurs"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116691897147028273","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752257","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=752257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/752257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/752258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=752257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=752257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=752257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}