Quezi

Staples Center (photo by maveric2003 - CC-BY)

As of 2009, the best city to live in the United States if you are a big basketball fan is the city of Los Angeles—and not just because the Lakers won the championship at the time of this writing.

If you are a basketball fan, it is always nice to have a team or a bunch of teams who are always in the running. They don’t have to win a championship year in and year out. The teams just have to be competitive most of the time. They may suffer an occasional down time of not making the playoffs but it does not usually last.

So why would Los Angeles be a good city for a basketball fan? The records speak for themselves.

Going back to the Lakers, this team has won 10 NBA championships while in Los Angeles (They have a total of 15 if you count the years in Minneapolis),. They have also appeared in the Finals 25 times. The Lakers has the most playoff appearances in the history of the NBA with 45. These numbers don’t count those won by the Lakers when the franchise was in Minneapolis from 1946 to 1959. These are staggering numbers. It means that if you are a 50 year old basketball fan, the Lakers only had 10 bad years. And yet these bad years are spread apart since in every decade they have always had some playoff appearance.

Another reason why it is good to be a basketball fan in Los Angeles will be the UCLA Bruins. The University of California, Los Angeles has won a total of 11 NCAA titles, they have appeared in 13 NCAA championship games which means they only lost 2 games in the finals in all of history! They are in a tie with North Carolina for the most Final Four Appearances, with 18.

When the men finish playing, Los Angeles can still look forward to basketball with the LA Sparks in the WNBA. In the 13 seasons of the WNBA, the Sparks have won 2 WNBA Championships. They’ve been in the finals seven times, and have a total of 10 playoff appearances, so this means that they only suffered 3 bad seasons.

So if you are a basketball junkie and you want your voice to stay coarse all year round, then Los Angeles is the place to be.

Sources:

Los Angeles Lakers
Playoff Appearances
NBA Titles

“NCAA Men’s Division I Final Four appearances by school” (Wikipedia)

“NCAA Men’s Division I Tournament bids by school” (Wikipedia)

“UCLA Bruins Basketball”

Los Angeles Sparks

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