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1999-2000: Return to Dominance

The 1999-2000 season was the beginning of a new era in Los Angeles Lakers basketball. The team hired a new head coach in former Chicago Bulls lead man Phil Jackson, and for the first time in 31 years the Lakers would play their home games somewhere other than the Great Western Forum, as the club moved into the brand new 18,997-seat STAPLES Center in Downtown Los Angeles.

Jackson brought with him three new assistant coaches in Jim Cleamons (a former player on the Lakers 1971-72 squad), Frank Hamblen and Tex Winter, and along with holdover Bill Bertka, that quartet would form one of the most experienced assistant coaching teams in the NBA. The team also took on a different look as veterans A.C. Green, Ron Harper, John Salley and Brian Shaw were added to the roster.

Shaquille O'Neal began the season with a vengeance as he earned NBA Player of the Month honors for November after averaging 28.7 points, 13.4 rebounds and 3.36 blocked shots in the first month of the season. O'Neal continued his dominating ways as he earned Player of the Month honors two more times, in February and March, becoming the first player to receive Player of the Month accolades three different times in the same season. O'Neal was also named the MVP of the 2000 All-Star Game played in Oakland and was joined there for the second time by teammate Kobe Bryant.

Not limited to individual efforts, the new coaching staff, the veteran additions, and the returning players all meshed incredibly well as the club got off to a fast start, registering wins in 25 of their first 30 games and reeling off a 16-game winning streak in the first half of the season. The streaks continued as the Lakers also added a 19-game winning streak and an 11-game winning streak to become only the third NBA team to register three different double-figure winning streaks in the same season.

The Lakers stormed though the regular season achieving the best record in the league (67-15) and earning homecourt advantage throughout the playoffs. Though they were heavily favored, the team struggled to get out of the first round, needing five games to defeat the Sacramento Kings. The next round was less difficult as the Lakers knocked off the Phoenix Suns in five games. The Western Conference Finals against the Portland Trail Blazers went to seven games, as the Lakers staged a miraculous comeback. Trailing by 13 points entering the fourth quarter of Game Seven, the Lakers fought back to win the game and the Western Conference Championship. Boosted by their improbable comeback, the Lakers went on to defeat the Indiana Pacers in six games, earning their first NBA Championship since 1988.

O'Neal (First Team) and Bryant (Second Team) were named to the All-NBA teams and both were also named to the NBA's All-Defensive Teams, with Bryant becoming the youngest player to ever receive All-Defensive honors. O'Neal became only the third player to be named Most Valuable Player of the regular season, All-Star Game and the NBA Finals.

2000-01: Back to Back-to-Back

With a nucleus that included two of the NBA's best players in Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant and a head coach that has won seven NBA titles in Phil Jackson, the Lakers began the season with aspirations of winning a second consecutive NBA Championship.

After struggling to contain the Western Conference's high scoring power forwards in the playoffs, Los Angeles dealt Glen Rice and Travis Knight to the New York Knicks in a three-way deal involving the Seattle SuperSonics, which netted power forward Horace Grant and center Greg Foster. Having played under Jackson earlier in their careers, both Grant and Foster were skilled in running the Lakers triangle offense, and Grant was to provide a solid defensive and rebounding presence.

Derek Fisher began the season on the injured list after being diagnosed with a stress fracture in his right foot and would miss the first 62 games of the season. The rest of the team also got off to a slow start and was 31-16 at the All-Star break, already picking up one more loss than during the entire 1999-2000 campaign. The Lakers battled through injuries to Fisher, O'Neal and Bryant, but as the club returned to full health, the Lakers began to pick up steam heading into the postseason.

After a 96-88 win over the Utah Jazz at the Delta Center on April 3, the Lakers ran off eight consecutive victories, their longest winning streak of the season, and were able to claim their second consecutive Pacific Division title, edging out the Sacramento Kings in the last week of the season. Los Angeles would not lose another contest until Game 1 of the NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers, sweeping Portland, Sacramento and San Antonio. Philadelphia surprised the Lakers with a 107-101 overtime victory at STAPLES Center, but Los Angeles went on to victories in each of the next four games to claim a second consecutive NBA title.

O'Neal was named Finals MVP after averaging 33.0 points and 15.8 rebounds against Philadelphia and was again a First Team All-NBA selection. Fisher returned from injury to convert 35 three-pointers throughout the playoffs, setting an NBA record with 15 threes in the four-game series against San Antonio. Bryant earned Second Team All-NBA and Second-Team All-Defense honors.

1947-48: The Game's First Star

The Lakers franchise predates the NBA. The Minneapolis Lakers' first season was 1947-48, when the team entered the National Basketball League. A strange series of events early that year landed the Lakers the biggest prize in the game at that time-center George Mikan.

Mikan was a 6-10 giant of a man who had dominated college basketball in his four years at DePaul. He joined the Chicago American Gears at the end of the 1945-46 season, then led the Gears to the NBL Championship the following year.

Prior to the 1947-48 campaign Maurice White, president of the American Gear Company and owner of the Chicago team, pulled the club out of the NBL. White's plan was to create a 24-team circuit called the Professional Basketball League of America, in which he would own all of the teams and all of the arenas. But the new league lasted barely a month, and the players on White's teams were distributed among the 11 NBL franchises. The first-year Minneapolis Lakers landed Mikan strictly by chance.

The Lakers were a good team even without Mikan. The club featured a fine forward named Jim Pollard and one of the better playmakers in the league in Herm Schaefer. Coaching the squad was John Kundla, who had been hired away from the University of Minnesota. But once the bespectacled Mikan joined the Lakers there was no stopping them.

Minneapolis walked away with the NBL crown that season. After winning the Western Division by 13 games, the team disposed of the Oshkosh All-Stars, the Tri-Cities Blackhawks, and the Rochester Royals. Minneapolis lost only two games during the postseason, one in the first round and one in the finals against the Royals. Mikan paced the circuit in scoring during the regular season with 21.3 points per game and was tops in postseason play with an average of 24.4 points per contest.

1948-49: Minneapolis Jumps To BAA

The franchise struggled for respectability during its first four years. The inaugural 1946-47 campaign yielded a 22-38 record and a last-place tie with the Toronto Huskies in the BAA's Eastern Division. Connie Simmons, a 6-8 center, led the Celtics in scoring with 10.3 points per game.

The team fared slightly better the following year, managing to make the playoffs with a 20-28 record. Appearing in their first postseason contest, the Celtics lost Game 1 to the Chicago Stags, but they came back to beat the Stags, 81-77, on March 31, 1948, to claim the franchise's first-ever playoff win. Their playoff hopes were short-lived, however, as the Stags eliminated the Celtics two nights later.

For the 1948-49 campaign Brown hired a new coach, Alvin "Doggie" Julian, who had guided Holy Cross to an NCAA Championship the year before. But the results were pretty much the same. Boston's roster was populated with little-remembered players such as Gene Stump, Dutch Garfinkel, and Hank Beenders, just 3 of the 18 cagers who wore Celtics Green that season. The club finished out of the playoffs with a 25-35 mark.

The BAA merged with the rival National Basketball League prior to the 1949-50 season. The new league, christened the National Basketball Association, fielded 17 teams. Julian was back at Boston's helm for a second year, and the Celtics once again finished out of the playoffs with a 22-46 record that earned them the last-place spot in the Eastern Division.

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HP to expand Linux desktop distribution

Responding to corporate America's thirst for a cheap alternative to Microsoft Windows, Hewlett-Packard Co. announced Wednesday it will widely distribute and support Linux as a desktop operating system for businesses.

At Novell Inc.'s annual BrainShare conference, HP said it was expanding its partnership with Novell by packaging its SuSE version of Linux with computers bound for corporate clients.

"When you have the No. 1 client provider and a major Linux distributor out there, this is a pretty significant move," said Martin Fink, vice president of HP's Linux division.

HP decided to move more toward the Linux platform after "a number of very large customers from Fortune 50 companies" expressed interest in the product, Fink said.

Those customers are looking for ways to cut information technology costs and figure that cutting out the expense of buying multiple Windows licenses would help, he said.

Microsoft Corp. declined to comment.

HP already offers Linux options for select client systems, and sells more than 400,000 Linux-based workstations each year. But Fink said most of those clients are in Asia and Eastern Europe, and Wednesday's announcement reflects a bigger commitment to integrating Linux desktops into corporate operations in North America.

Fink declined to offer specific projections of how many more Linux-based desktops the company might sell.

"We want to grow at least as fast as the market, and faster if we can," he said.

The desktops would be available only to corporate consumers. He wouldn't comment on how much the units would cost, saying expenses would vary by client and by distribution method.

Linux, an open-source operating system that's developed by a community of volunteer and paid programmers, has so far found traction mainly in corporate servers, not in desktop PCs. Today, only up to 3 percent of all client computers ship with Linux, though the number is difficult to track since half of them end up in China, where many of the computers end up with copies of Windows installed, said IDC analyst Roger Kay.

"The reality is it's probably 1 percent using Linux," Kay said.

Fink said he expected to roll out the product in the second half of 2004. Customers would have a choice of obtaining the software directly from Novell or using a version packaged with the computer.

Eventually, Fink said, Linux desktops would be preloaded onto machines.

If Linux sees wider adoption on the desktop, it could force some changes at Microsoft, Kay added.

"What's interesting is the possibility it will give Microsoft the impression that it's actually in a competitive market," Kay said. "It would act like a competitor rather than a monopoly and use price as a competitive tool."

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