Former Lakers Hall of Famer Gets Honest About Rival NBA 'Super Teams'

The Lakers were so loaded that they also fielded rosters with several other Hall of Fame players, including three-time All-Star small forward Jamaal Wilkes and eight-time All-Defensive Team shooting guard Michael Cooper.

During a fresh conversation with longtime NBA insider Brandon "Scoop B" Robinson , Cooper got real regarding his true feelings about NBA "super teams," including the Dwyane Wade-era Miami Heat (in both the franchise's Shaquille O'Neal and LeBron James/Chris Bosh title runs) and the short-lived Houston Rockets team that, on paper, was pretty darn super.

Cooper, a 6-foot-7 swingman out of the University of New Mexico, was present for all five of his hometown Lakers' titles during the "Showtime" era.

Cooper believes that the Lakers could be seen as having been pretty "super" thanks to the litany of Hall of Fame-heavy clubs they vanquished along the way to their titles.

"We went to the NBA Finals nine times," Cooper observed. "People don’t understand that — from 1980 to 1991, we went to the Finals nine times. And we won it five times. And we went through a lot of tough, talented teams. You look at it for us, we had the Seattle Supersonics when they won the championship in ‘79. We dethroned them in 1980. You had George “Iceman” Gervin and the A-Train (Artis Gilmore), you had Portland the team that they had up there with Mychal Thompson and Clyde Drexler; you had the Utah Jazz with Karl Malone and John Stockton just to name a few, ok? Then you look at the East. You had Detroit. You had Boston. You had the Sixers. You had Cleveland. You had Atlanta with Dominique [Wilkins] and the group that he had."

"...I think the difference between our team and any other team — and the Miami team, I’m not saying that they weren’t a great team because LeBron and Wade and Shaq there that damn sure was a super team but, we RAN!" Cooper opined. 

Wade played with O'Neal from 2004-08, while he suited up next to James from 2010-14.

"We’re gonna get up and down the floor, we’re gonna play defense — even though people don’t see us because when you talk about Showtime Lakers, you talk about Magic’s no-look passes, [James] Worthy swooping to the hoop, A Coop-A-Loop, Kareem’s skyhook, Magic’s drive… but you didn’t see us as a defensive team but, we were a very VERY good defensive team and that’s why it enabled us to be in so many games as we did. But you know what? We were gonna run you. We were gonna push tempo," Cooper said.

Cooper took umbrage with the 1998-99 Houston Rockets, a "super team" that comprised an aging core of future Hall of Famers Hakeem Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, and Scottie Pippen.

Still led by two-time Rockets championship head coach Rudy Tomjanovich, the Rockets went 31-19 during a lockout-shortened season, but fell in four games to the Lakers in the first round of the playoffs amid player in-fighting.

"Super teams are very rare but I think the Houston [Rockets] team that Barkley played with and the guys that he had on that team, I would consider them that but again, my thinking of 'super teams' is winning championships. And if you win a championship that requires that you can possibly be one but, it’s the mile of longevity and how good were you?" Cooper noted. "Not just one or two years, but how good were you? Yeah we didn’t win every year, but we were very good every year and like I said in the 80’s, we went to the Finals nine times... Winning it five times? We were good."