Jerry West and the Lakers won an NBA-record 33-straight games during the 1971-72 season.
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On Nov. 5, 1971, the Los Angeles Lakers beat the Baltimore Bullets 110-106, starting an epic winning streak that lasted more than two months, and culminated with 33 consecutive victories, still an NBA record, and the longest winning streak in American pro sports.
Win No. 33 came against the Atlanta Hawks on Jan. 7, 1972. The streak was ended by the Milwaukee Bucks two nights later.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Los Angeles Lakers’ historic 33-game winning streak. Looking back, what stands out in your mind about this remarkable run?
Steve Aschburner: What stands out to me about the Lakers’ great 33-game winning streak is the context. This was an old team, with a championship window that seemed to be closing rather than opening. And its core of legends — an early “super team” except for the ganging-up-as-free-agents part — had all seen better days.
Jerry West was 33, 12 seasons in, already “The Logo” but saddled with an 0-7 Finals record that bothered no one more than him. Elgin Baylor was 37, his unprecedented above-the-rim style grounded by age and knee issues; in fact, he wouldn’t even make it to the streak’s start. He played in just nine games, including three straight on Oct. 29-31, then retired. Wilt Chamberlain, by age 35, was framed more as a symbol of futility than exalted for his prodigious scoring, rebounding, passing and shot-blocking accomplishments. His career butted directly against the greatest dynasty in professional sports, the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics. He broke through once, leading the 1967 Philadelphia 76ers to a remarkable title run, but otherwise was often cast for his size and his powers as an NBA villain. So Baylor retired, new coach Bill Sharman — a former Celtics star — plugged his spot with second-year Jim McMillian and the Lakers beat Baltimore at the Forum on Nov. 5. They kept winning for the next two months, 33 in all, 16 on the road, right through Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s.
Already the NBA’s best offensive and second-best defensive team, outscoring opponents by 10.5 points per game overall, the Lakers upped everything during the win streak: 123.3 points per game, 107.3 allowed, a 16.0 average margin of victory. They shot 50.2% in those 33 victories to their opponents’ 41.6%. Only once did they get pushed into overtime (by Phoenix on Dec. 10) and their “narrowest” victory came by four points in that streak-starter against the Bullets. It finally ended in Milwaukee on Jan. 7, still celebrated by the Bucks franchise as one of its greatest victories ever. From 6-3 to 39-3 to eventually 69-13, the Lakers posted what was league’s best record ever until 1995-96.
But here’s the real context for the Lakers’ streak: It would have been wasted or worse, maybe used to mock them, had they not won the NBA championship that spring. Ask the Golden State Warriors if they’d feel better about their 73-9 season in 2015-16 if they hadn’t lost in The Finals to Cleveland. Then multiply that lost glory by about 10. West winning his ring, Chamberlain silencing some critics, those 33 straight getting validated by the Lakers’ 12-3 postseason tear through the Chicago Bulls, Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks upheld the streak’s prestige.
Mark Medina: What goes into sustaining a winning streak? Playing at your best every single game. Handling an opponent’s best shot. And tapping into both the talent and chemistry that sparked the streak in the first place. The Lakers won their first NBA championship in L.A. and established the NBA’s longest winning streak by consistently tapping into those qualities.
It helped the Lakers had Hall-of-Fame talent in Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Goodrich. It helped even more they had strong team chemistry that helped them iron out team dynamics, maximize depth and absorb Elgin Baylor’s abrupt retirement.
The newly hired Sharman convinced his players to attend morning shootaround, a ritual that has since become common in today’s NBA. More importantly, he helped the Lakers’ three stars learn how to co-exist. West averaged at least 25 points for his 11th consecutive season, while leading the league with 9.7 assists. Goodrich became the NBA’s fifth leading scorer (25.9 points per game). At age 35 in his second-to-last season, Chamberlain focused more on efficiency (64% shooting) and hustle (league-leading 19.2 rebounds) than scoring (career-low 14.9 points). The Lakers had dependable reinforcements in both their frontcourt (Jim McMillian, Happy Hairston, Leroy Ellis) and backcourt (Flynn Robinson, Pat Riley).
Shaun Powell: The story of the streak initially was not how it started, but what jump-started it: Elgin Baylor’s retirement. It was, by all accounts, a forced retirement because Baylor’s knees were shot and he was the last to know. Bill Sharman, the new coach, wanted a more up-tempo style and Baylor couldn’t run or jump anymore. Sharman yanked him from the starting lineup and Baylor’s ego couldn’t handle it — Jeff Van Gundy, years later, always said how tough it is to coach a star in decline — so the great Elgin retired just days before the Lakers got win No. 1 of the streak. That footnote came with sadness because, throughout his career, Elgin played in the Bill Russell era and therefore went without a ring.
Another part that goes unnoticed is how the 1971-72 Lakers, by and large, were aging — hmmm, does this sound familiar in 2022? — with Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West starting a slow fade. Chamberlain would retire two seasons later. The Lakers got an infusion of energy from Happy Hairston and Gail Goodrich, and then caught fire, and before you know it, kept rolling, all of it quite unexpectedly. There were a few close calls. The previous record was 21 straight by the Bucks and the night before they tied that streak, the Lakers played the Suns in what was L.A.’s third game in three nights (such was the scheduling back then). The Lakers survived when Connie Hawkins’ potential game-winning shot at the buzzer rimmed out. A strange development took place during the streak: Sharman began losing his voice and often used a megaphone at practice; his damaged vocal cords would plague him for life.
John Schuhmann: It’s the schedule that always gets me. The first eight games of the streak took place over 10 days (Nov. 5-14): A back-to-back-to-back (on the West coast), a day off, a back-to-back (in Chicago and Philadelphia), a day off, and then another back-to-back-to-back (back on the West coast). Wilt Chamberlain (38.9), Jim McMillan (37.5) and Jerry West (36.3) all averaged more than 36 minutes over that stretch. There were two more back-to-back-to-back sets during the streak, with one of them (Dec. 8-10) starting with a game in Houston and then taking the Lakers back to L.A. And these guys were flying commercial!
Michael C. Wright: First off, what stands out is how everything came together to enable the streak. The Lakers bring in a new coach in Bill Sharman to start that season, and going into 1971-72, the team’s three best players — Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor — had played just 14 games together over the previous two seasons. It was clear those guys, each in their 30s, were nearing the end of their careers. But when Sharman came in, he changed the dynamic drastically, coaching the squad hard and somehow convincing Chamberlain (known as a late-night partier) to attend shootarounds (new at the time) as the Lakers started to put together a gameday routine.
What’s even wilder is the fact that Baylor, currently No. 31 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, actually announced his retirement the day before the Lakers embarked on this amazing 33-game winning streak. The Lakers pulled off this streak at a time when teams travelled commercially without all the fancy recovery and rehabilitation technology enjoyed by today’s players. Players weren’t sitting out games to rest. But then again, the playing field was even back then in those aspects. During that streak, the Lakers played only one overtime game. But in four instances, they captured victories on three straight days. That’s almost unheard of, and the closest any team has come since to matching that streak was the 2012-13 Miami Heat, which rolled up 27 consecutive victories.
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