In sports, there’s a lot of great one-liners and cliches. When it comes to adding key players to a roster in the off season (whatever the off season may be for your particular sport), there’s a big difference between “rebuilding” and “reloading.” For the Los Angeles Lakers, right after the 2000-01 season, it was definitely a matter of reloading what was already a powerful team, and making it even better.
The NBA Championship of that season saw the Lakers defeat the Indiana Pacers in the final series. After that, there was absolutely no resting-on-laurels (whatever that means). The Lakers went out and made big moves to upgrade, adding the likes of Horace Grant, Isaiah Rider, and Greg Foster in free agency.
For the 2001-2002 season, the Lakers entered as a favorite to repeat as champions… and they did not disappoint. The team was 31-16 at the All-Star break and then finished the regular season 56-26, winning the Pacific Division over the Sacramento Kings by one game. The Lakers went on to repeat as NBA Champions, sweeping the New Jersey Nets 4-0 in the Finals.
Our friends at Fadeawayworld.com have taken a look at the roster for that team, and the money it took to bring together another Championship roster. Of course Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal were the superstar dominating duo, but they had plenty of good help as well. Still, when it came to money, the financial records show that Kobe and Shaq – while just two players – earned half the entire team payroll. Still, a pretty good investment, right?
According to Fadeawayworld.com, Kobe and Shaq were paid – between the pair – just shy of $30 million dollars. Of course that was in dollars valued quite differently back then! The entire payroll for the Lakers in the 2000-2001 season was (exactly) $58,968,213. In today’s inflation-adjusted dollars, that would be $101,351,093.
Of course as we’ve said, it was money well spent. In the regular season, Kobe and Shaq combined for 57.2 points per game. Flash forward to the playoffs that year, and the number was just short of 60 points per game. O’Neal led the team in rebounds at 15.4, while Bryant – playing as a guard – was second on the team with 7.3 per game. Bryant also led the team in assists.
For the next season, some well-known names were added to the roster. Here’s a few of our favorites, with their salaries at the time, and what that would be worth in today’s money:
Robert Horry – $4.8 million salary back then… today’s value: $8,249,720. When he was brought on by the Lakers, Horry was a three-time champion. Always a clutch-shot production machine, he earned the nickname “Big Shot Bob.” With the Lakers, he contributed 23.9 minutes and 5.9 points during the 2001-2002 playoffs. He backed up Horace Grant, but played big minutes in the postseason because he knew how to close out games.
Speaking of Grant, he was paid a nice $6.5 million, worth $8,249,720 today. Reunited with his coach Phil Jackson on the Lakes (after spending quality time with the Bulls), Grant tied Rick Fox for the most starts (77) on the team. Grant would also start all 16 games in the playoffs and play big-time minutes to help the Lakers clinch the title.
There were several other well-known names, but we’ll end with Tyronn Lue. Salary for the season – about $865K. While he had a good – not great – career, it was Lue who would go on to become head coach of the Cleveland Cavaliers. With superstar LeBron James (now with the Lakers, of course), Lue, King James and the Cavs won the NBA Championship for Cleveland to close out the 2015-2016 season.