LAKERS TASCHEN BOOK OPENS WITH KAREEM, CLOSES WITH JACKSON

Taschen just added its first NBA franchise to a catalog built from fashion houses and entire cities: the Lakers. Lakers: An Official History of the Purple and Gold went on sale this week, arriving three months after the team's biggest roster departure in nearly a decade.

The timing reads less like coincidence than decision. A franchise does not commission its own history the year it loses its best player unless it wants control of the story before someone else writes it first.

528 Pages Cover Seven Decades, Not One Banner

The book runs five hundred twenty eight pages and moves across the Lakers' full seven decades, from the Minneapolis franchise through the current roster, built around rare photography and original essays instead of a highlight reel of one championship run. Taschen calls it the first team monograph it has built around an NBA franchise.

LeBron James left the Lakers after eight seasons in June, and the book covers him as one era inside seven, not the ending. FO covered the Lakers' seventeen championships and the Hollywood identity built around them in March, before the roster turned over. Taschen's five hundred twenty eight pages extend that argument with the franchise's own archive behind it, not a beat reporter's.

The Lakers name itself is a leftover from that Minneapolis start, a nod to Minnesota's lakes that the franchise never bothered updating after the 1960 move to Los Angeles, a city with famously few of them. Taschen's essays lean into that kind of continuity trivia instead of skipping past it toward the highlight reel.

Kareem Abdul Jabbar Opens It, Phil Jackson Closes It

Kareem Abdul Jabbar writes the foreword and Phil Jackson writes the afterword, bracketing the book with the two most decorated voices in franchise history outside ownership. Governor Jeanie Buss writes the introduction herself, and contributions run through Magic Johnson, Shaquille O'Neal and LeBron James.

Abdul Jabbar's six championships came under one system in the nineteen eighties. Jackson's five came under a different one two decades later. Abdul Jabbar also retired in 1989 as the NBA's all time leading scorer, a record James broke in 2023 wearing the same purple and gold jersey. That makes the book's three way handshake, Abdul Jabbar's foreword, Jackson's afterword and James inside the contributor list, read less like a coincidence and more like Taschen mapping the franchise's three biggest chapters onto one spine.

The Book Calls Itself Official. The Timing Still Reads Defensive

The Lakers describe the release as an official team product, sold through the Lakers Team Shop, the Team LA store at Crypto.com Arena, LakersStore.com and TASCHEN's own stores and site. A franchise publishing its authorized history the year its highest paid asset leaves for another roster is not typical offseason programming.

Most team history books arrive after a title, timed to a parade. This one arrives after an exit, timed to a rebuild. Jeanie Buss writing her own introduction, rather than handing that job to a ghostwriter or a beat reporter, reads as ownership wanting its hand visibly on the framing while the roster is still being rebuilt around Luka Doncic.

Nike Put Its Archive In a Museum. The Lakers Put Theirs On a Shelf.

Nike opened its own design archive to the public this month at a sold out talk inside the Museum of Arts and Design, a fashion and product institution treating its own history as a subject worth a formal audience. The Lakers made a similar bet in a different format: a book instead of a lecture hall, retail shelves instead of a museum gift shop.

Both moves point at one instinct showing up outside its usual lane. Archiving used to be a museum's job or a superfan's basement project. Now the institutions themselves are doing it, on their own terms, while the story is still being written, not after everyone has forgotten who was there.

Call the temperature early and warm. A team publishing its own authorized history mid transition is not nostalgia, it is the Lakers writing their own version of the story before ESPN gets the chance. Five hundred twenty eight pages and two Hall of Fame signatures bracketing the text is the franchise betting its identity survives any one departure, LeBron included.