In this ongoing series, we will take a trip to yesteryear to highlight some Los Angeles Lakers players whom some fans may have forgotten. These players didn’t get the billing that some others enjoyed, but they were very instrumental to the Lakers’ success.
When people talk about the great Lakers teams of the early 2000s that won three straight NBA championships and their most important role players, Brian Shaw sometimes doesn’t get mentioned. But the 6-foot-6 man provided them with some important depth and insurance in the backcourt, and he continued to contribute to the team after his playing days were over.
Shaw paid his dues for years before coming to L.A.
A native of Oakland, Calif., Shaw started his college basketball career at St. Mary’s College of California, which is located in the San Francisco Bay Area. He then got his first taste of Southern California when he transferred to the University of California, Santa Barbara for his junior year of college. As a senior, he led the Gauchos to their first appearance in the NCAA tournament.
Shaw was then taken at No. 24 in the 1988 NBA Draft by the Boston Celtics. At the time, the Celtics were still championship contenders, but they were aging and in dire need of youth and depth. After his rookie year in Boston, he signed a contract to play pro ball in Italy, which triggered a much-publicized court case that Shaw lost, forcing him to return to the Celtics.
He was a key part of a 1990-91 Celtics team that momentarily looked revitalized after losing in the first round of the previous season’s playoffs. He averaged 13.8 points and 7.6 assists a game that year, yet Boston shipped him off to the expansion Miami Heat midway through the 1991-92 campaign.
Shaw then found himself with an Orlando Magic team that was a rising power thanks to a young Shaquille O’Neal. They reached the NBA Finals that year, and although they got swept by the Houston Rockets, they were expected to become the league’s next great team.
But it didn’t happen, and O’Neal left to join the Lakers in 1996. Shaw then played for three different teams during the 1997-98 and 1998-99 seasons, although he appeared in just one contest with the Portland Trail Blazers during the latter campaign.
At that point, it looked like his NBA career may be over.
Shaw resurrects his career with the Purple and Gold
In 1999, the Lakers hired head coach Phil Jackson, and they hoped his experience coaching the Chicago Bulls to six NBA championships would turn things around for them. O’Neal and crew had known nothing but playoff failure and collapses, and Jackson was seen as the man who would teach them how to win.
As training camp opened, however, it looked like it would take them time to be ready to truly contend for an NBA title. Complicating matters was a hand injury Kobe Bryant suffered that would sideline him for about six weeks.
In order to bolster their backcourt depth in the wake of Bryant’s injury, L.A. brought in Shaw. Although he was 33 years of age, he would be of immediate help.
His regular season stats that year — 4.1 points and 2.7 assists in 16.9 minutes a game — may seem meager. But he was huge in the biggest game of the season and perhaps the entire era.
The Lakers were down by 16 points near the end of the third quarter of Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals to the Portland Trail Blazers. It looked like another playoff collapse was in progress. But Shaw banked in a 3-pointer to end the period, giving the team a trickle of hope.
Early in the fourth period, he hit another trey to trim L.A.’s deficit to 10 and provide the fans at Staples Center with more hope that a comeback had started. One had indeed started, and when Shaw hit his third from deep with about four minutes left, the team had come all the way back to tie the game at 75.
It went on to win, 89-84, and advance to the NBA Finals, where it dispatched the Indiana Pacers in six games to claim its first world championship in 12 years.
Two more rings followed in the next two years, making the Lakers a dynastic team. Although Shaw never really played major minutes, he would come in at key junctures of key games and help stabilize the squad.
He retired as a player in 2003, and he would be a scout for the Lakers during the 2003-04 season. The next year, he began a seven-year stint as an assistant coach for them, and six of them would come under Jackson, as they would win two more championships in 2009 and 2010 to complete their Bryant-era dynasty.
Shaw may have started his career as a Celtic, but he will ultimately be remembered as a Laker.
