Star Plaza outside of Crypto.com Arena is full of statues from some of the greatest Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings players of all-time. And now they are joined by the first Los Angeles Sparks player as Basketball Hall of Famer Lisa Leslie was honored with a bronze statue on Sunday.
Leslie became the first woman with a statue outside of the arena where she helped lead the Sparks to back-to-back WNBA Championships in 2001 and 2002. And many Lakers legends took time to praise her on social media, including Magic Johnson, James Worthy and Pau Gasol:
Congrats again to the amazing @LisaLeslie on her well-deserved statue in front of https://t.co/oATiXlK7nk arena! 👏🏾 https://t.co/7kAeqlqI8K
— Earvin Magic Johnson (@MagicJohnson) September 21, 2026
Love you @LisaLeslie https://t.co/N4e9JfiU2C
— James Worthy (@JamesWorthy42) September 21, 2026
Huge congrats @LisaLeslie! Well deserved honor and recognition 🙌🏼 https://t.co/Rbc8hChODg
— Pau Gasol (@paugasol) September 21, 2026
Leslie was an absolute force and true pioneer for women’s basketball. In addition to those two WNBA Championships, in which she also won Finals MVP for both, she was also a three-time WNBA regular season MVP and two-time WNBA Defensive Player of the Year while also being the first woman to ever dunk in a WNBA game, which was the moment immortalized in the statue itself.
Leslie is also a Southern California native, being born in Compton and attending Morningside High School in Inglewood where she tied Cheryl Miller’s record by scoring 101 points in a single game. She also attended USC where she was the National Player of the Year in 1994.
Obviously a trail blazer for women’s basketball and the WNBA, Leslie truly had the respect of her NBA peers for her skill level on the court and the person she was off of it as well. That’s why the all-time greats like Johnson and Worthy not only took to social media, but were also in attendance of the unveiling as well as she joined the pantheon of legends to forever be immortalized with a statue in Star Plaza.
Lakers unveil bobbleheads for Norm Nixon, Kurt Rambis and Paul Westhead
The Lakers will be doing a number of giveaways for the upcoming 2026-27 regular season and that includes honoring some of the important members of the 1980s championship teams.
The franchise unveiled bobbleheads for Norm Nixon and Kurt Rambis, as well as former coach Paul Westhead, who will all be honored as part of the new League of Stars program presented by BMO.
If you love our reporting, choose LakersNation.com as a preferred source on Google.
