Welcome to this website’s off-season sports sartorial content. We are counting down the world’s top 50 most iconic sports uniforms. Only current uniforms apply, we are not including one-off or alternate uniforms. Let’s stick to the basics.
#3
Los Angeles Lakers
Showtime. This is the uniform that every basketball player, secretly or not, wants to wear at least once if they make it to the NBA. Well, maybe not Celtics fans. Many know the story of the Lakers beginnings in Minnesota with a baby blue and yellow color scheme that switched to royal blue and white for a few seasons before the team moved to Los Angeles.
After the move to California, the franchise kept the royal blue but added baby blue back to the color scheme through the 1966-67 NBA season. Since then, the Lakers have worn the quintessential and most identifiable basketball uniform in the world.
The decision to wear yellow (officially Lakers gold) for their home uniform set was a bold and iconic decision all by itself. Beginning with 1967, Los Angeles donned yellow jerseys and shorts with purple and white trim and thick purple striping down the side of the shorts. On their chest, the Lakers logo was in purple with white outline and the player number reversed in white with purple outline, all in drop shadow.
In 1972, the Lakers logo was added to the side of the shorts with a thick purple waist band. Several years later in 1978, the player numbers were switched to purple with white trim to match the script above. This was the standard uniform for many years all the way through the Showtime era and into the late 1990’s.
In 1999, Los Angeles removed the collar and waistband trim and added a purple and white trimmed flank on the jerseys to match that same pattern down the shorts. They also reverted back to the white numbers outlined in purple and axed the drop shadow.
For 2018, the Lakers returned to a more classic look on the jersey with purple numbers (with skinnier drop shadow), the purple flanks were gone, the purple waistband returned, and they’ve been using a (controversial) more brighter color yellow with the uniforms during the LeBron era.
THE quintessential Los Angeles Laker, Rui Hachimura! Seriously, though, bright yellow in uniforms sucks (see: Packers, Green Bay & Lakers, Los Angeles)
I lean more towards liking the Celtics jerseys over the Lakers
The only bad thing about this current edition of the Lakers uniform is the bright highlighter yellow instead of the classic yellow.
Also, the Lakers used to wear mismatched road uniforms
https://x.com/UniWatch/status/1021564153142669312.
Wow, I had never known about this before. That’s wild, even for that era.
Also, the Lakers script used to be not aligned level with the numbers. Basically, what I’m saying is before the mid 80’s, the Lakers uniforms were basically up to the equipment manager’s interpretation.
I got ncaa 25 on monday and I have already won a national championship with Notre Dame
It is the greatest game ever of all time
Did you pick to wear green, or that is what it defaulted to?
Those uniform pants look less mustard-y and more gold