A brief history of the Phoenix Suns and Los Angeles Lakers rivalry
By Adam Maynes
The Tide Turns
As the calendar turned to a new decade, so did the dominance between the two teams.
While the Lakers won the 1989-90 regular season series 3-1, Phoenix was much better prepared to face off against the Los Angeles playoff machine that May.
Phoenix eked out a two-point victory in game one of the 1990, but the Lakers won a 24-point game two blowout causing many to question if the game one victory was a fluke or if the Suns really could compete.
Not only did Phoenix compete, but they dominated, and set up several years of overall Suns supremacy.
The Suns won out that 1990 Semifinals series to win their first ever playoff series over the Lakers 4-1, a series victory that, from the Suns’ perspective, became the catalyst of a changing of the guard in the Western Conference.
The Lakers didn’t fully fall apart yet as they made it into the NBA Finals one more time in 1991, Michael Jordan‘s first Finals, and won the regular season series over Phoenix 3-2 that year.
The Suns did continue to grow, however, and Phoenix won the series in 1991-92, 3-2, which preceded the end of the Magic Johnson era.
1992-93 not only brought the Suns’ best season in franchise history thus far, but also the most exciting playoff series ever.
The Suns swept the season series 5-0, the first time Phoenix had swept a series against L.A., and the first regular season sweep overall between the two since Los Angeles won 6-0 in 1968-69.
The series was capped off by Dan Majerle’s incredible 33-foot 3-pointer at the buzzer to win the final game of the series, one of many regular season moments worth highlighting.
The 1-seed Suns headed into the playoffs heavy favorites over the 8-seed Lakers, but in the First Round Los Angeles shocked the basketball world by stealing the first two games of the series, both in Phoenix. Following game two, Suns Head Coach Paul Westphal made his infamous prediction that the Suns would come back and win the series, and that it would be one of the greatest series’ in history.
His words came true, and while it took an overtime in game 5, Phoenix secured the playoff series victory, their second straight.
Following the Suns’ 1993 Finals run, the teams split the season series’ for the next three years, all with Barkley, 7-7, the greatest highlight being a November 1995 game in which Phoenix came back from 10 behind with only a minute remaining to win in regulation on a Michael Finley buzzer-beater jumper from the free throw line.