How Good are the Lakers Compared to Recent Championship Teams?

The L.A. Lakers are often called the most talented and/or deepest team in the NBA. I am skeptical of both claims: the Boston Celtics at full strength are more talented--they have three future Hall of Famers--and there are many teams that have more productive benches than the Lakers, who ranked 16th in the NBA in points per game by bench players during the 2009 regular season; even that ranking is a bit deceptive, because the Lakers' bench players typically play alongside either Pau Gasol or Kobe Bryant, so they benefit from being on the court with someone who attracts a lot of defensive attention.

While Gasol is an excellent complementary player to Kobe Bryant, he would not have been the second best player on the vast majority of championship teams from 1991-2008; Gasol is one of the top 15 players in the NBA today but several of the "sidekicks" on recent championship teams made the 50 Greatest Players List. My newest article for ProBasketballNews.com compares the seven man playoff rotation of the 2009 Lakers to the seven man playoff rotations of the championship teams of the "Phil Jackson era" (i.e., post 1991, when Jackson won the first of his record 10 championships as an NBA coach):

Comparing the '09 Lakers to champs of the past