Lakers-Magic Story Began 14 Years Ago

Posted by James Seaman on June 03, 2009

Bob Marley once said that if you know your history, then you would know where you’re coming from. In looking at where this year’s NBA Finals match-up came from, one can’t help but be struck by the eerie historical symmetry. Fourteen years ago, even Marley wouldn’t have been able to imagine how history would unfold for the Los Angeles Lakers and Orlando Magic. Yet the events of 1995 set into motion a strange domino effect that brought us to this moment in NBA history—Kobe Bryant and the Lakers vs. Dwight Howard and the Magic for all the marbles.

In 1995, the future appeared dazzlingly brilliant for the Orlando Magic—so bright, in fact, that it would practically blind those involved. Shaquille O’Neal had emerged as a seemingly unstoppable force in just his third NBA season. Shaq had the incomparable Penny Hardaway—a tall, athletic, supremely gifted point guard even younger than O’Neal—to supplement his scoring and set up his monster dunks. The Magic also had mad bombers Nick Anderson and Dennis Scott, as well as Horace Grant, a man who knew a thing or two about playing on championship teams. So even though Houston swept the Magic in the 1995 NBA Finals, the future seemed like Orlando’s for the taking.

Only a year later, Michael Jordan’s Bulls throttled Shaq’s club in the Eastern Conference Finals. The biggest of all big men subsequently left Orlando, one of the league’s smallest markets. It seemed Central Florida just didn’t have enough sky to support this ever-growing star, but in Hollywood Shaq could shine as brightly as he wished. While Shaq betrayed the Magic, Penny Hardaway was betrayed by his own body. The Memphis product became just another tragically oft-injured what-might-have-been story. These devastating blows left Orlando broken, and it would take them more than a decade to recover.

Above the opposite end of the country, cosmic bodies began slowly aligning. During the same summer that Shaq joined the Lakers, a high school phenom named Kobe Bryant was busy orchestrating the beginnings of his own Hollywood story. Bryant allegedly let the New Jersey Nets know that he would not play in East Rutherford, so they shouldn’t even think about selecting him in the 1996 NBA Draft. The Charlotte Hornets undoubtedly heard the same message, as they grabbed Bryant only to trade him to the Lakers. Still a few years away from championship form, Jerry West was sowing the seeds of yet another basketball dynasty in Los Angeles.

While the Magic found themselves mired in mediocrity, the Lakers ascended to greatness, winning three successive NBA Titles to open the 21^st Century. Shaq and Kobe conquered and pillaged under the ultimate leadership of Phil Jackson, the same man who had coached the Bulls against the Magic in the 1996 Eastern Conference Finals—Shaq’s last days in Orlando. Yet even Los Angeles couldn’t provide enough spotlight for the Lakers’ crowded locker room of stars, and the team broke up after losing to Detroit in the 2004 NBA Finals.

Some suggest that Kobe Bryant dissolved the marriage, ready to prove that he could win without Shaq. Whether Kobe forced the issue or not, his greatness is now being judged by whether or not he can win a title without the Big Aristotle. He will have a chance to do just that against the Orlando Magic, a franchise that has come full circle by rebuilding itself around Dwight Howard, a Shaq-like specimen who dominates the low post and struggles to make free throws. These Finals feature the two most dominant teams of the 2009 playoffs. But this is, in fact, the final word in a much longer saga, a story 14 years in the making, a tale begun by authors who couldn’t possible know the history they were about to write.

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