Move over, Lakers. Not so fast, Rams. Dodgers are NL West champions again — and still LA’s team

The Dodgers are the National League West champions.

Again.

They have won their division 13 times in the last 14 seasons, and the one time in that period in which they didn’t, they won a then-club-record 106 games.

Somewhere along the way, the Dodgers did the impossible: They met the requirements to become the sports franchise Los Angeles demanded.

Appreciating what this means requires an understanding of how Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant transformed this city in the early 2000s, 

With O’Neal and Bryant as their stars, the Lakers didn’t just win championships.

They were unbeatable.

This image was reinforced by the play of O’Neal, a 7-foot-1, 325-pound freak of nature who literally couldn’t be stopped.

By the time the Lakers completed their three-peat in 2002, championships were no longer something Los Angeles hoped for.

They became something the city expected.

This is the standard used to measure teams with aspirations of becoming a cultural touchstone in this congested market. With plenty of other entertainment options, casual fans won’t invest too much of their time and money in a team unless they believe it will create the kind of citywide pride O’Neal’s Lakers once did.

The Lakers haven’t been that team for some time. The Rams are producing a worthy on-field product, but they remain in the process of winning back fans they lost over the two decades they spent in St. Louis.

The Dodgers are the one team in town that is clearing the bar.

“What’s funny is Los Angeles has always been looked at, as far as sports, (as) a Laker town,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I think we might have the market share right now in Los Angeles. It’s great. I think we draw more fans than anyone in the world, obviously, with the home dates we have. But it’s 40,000, 50,000 every night. We travel well. I do think the guys see it. They feed off it.”

The Dodgers managed to do this despite playing a sport that is particularly hard to dominate. The Lakers could dump the ball into O’Neal 30 times a game. The Dodgers have employed a number of Hall of Famers over the years, but as great as Shohei Ohtani is, he can only hit four times a game, maybe five. 

The Dodgers have become a different kind of juggernaut. 

With substantial investment from their owners, they have built some of the deepest rosters in baseball history. In its first season operating the team, Guggenheim Baseball Management signed All-Star outfielder Andre Ethier to an $85 million extension, picked up a then-unknown Yasiel Puig for $42 million, traded for All-Star infielder Hanley Ramirez and assumed more than $260 million in contract obligations in a blockbuster trade for Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett.

Season after season, the Dodgers fielded one of the most expensive teams in the major leagues — if not the most expensive team.

Which is why at some point in each of the last 14 seasons, the Dodgers were considered favorites to win the World Series.

They are well into their second decade as baseball’s model franchise — or, depending on the perspective, Evil Empire. The last time they didn’t reach the playoffs, the world was a completely different place. LeBron James had just won his first NBA championship. “Gangnam Style” was a global phenomenon. The recreational use of marijuana was still outlawed in every jurisdiction of the United States.

There’s an entire generation of fans who don’t know what it’s like for the Dodgers to not be legitimate contenders.

Consistency by itself didn’t turn the Dodgers into the Dodgers of today. Actually winning championships was important, of course, and doing that required them to adjust how they built their rosters.

President of baseball operations Andrew Friedman used to operate as if the playoffs were a crapshoot. The organization’s focus was on the regular season, on just reaching the postseason. Because depth is required to survive a 162-game schedule, quantity was emphasized over quality. 

The approach didn’t produce any championships. The Dodgers reached the World Series twice in their first eight seasons under Guggenheim ownership but lost both times.

The failures prompted them to pursue real difference-makers.

Mookie Betts, who was the catalyst of the championship team in 2020. Freddie Freeman, the home run hero of the 2024 World Series. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the Most Valuable Player of the 2025 World Series. And, of course, Ohtani, the franchise’s most transformative player since Fernando Valenzuela, or maybe even Jackie Robinson.

The Dodgers have won three of the last six World Series. 

Even with Ohtani dealing with right arm and left knee injuries, they will open the postseason as the odds-on favorites to win their third consecutive championship.

As fragmented as Los Angeles can be, most of the city can get behind that.