On February 1, 2020, at Staples Center, Lawrence Tanter read the Los Angeles Lakers' starting lineup and gave every player the same name. "At the other forward is Number 24, 6-6, 20th campaign out of Lower Merion High School, Kobe Bryant," he said, then repeated the introduction four more times, once for each starter, in the Lakers' first home game since Bryant's death in a helicopter crash days earlier. Tanter, the Lakers' public address announcer for 43 years, died September 23, 2026, at age 76, three months after retiring from the microphone he had held since 1982.

He was born in 1949 in Chicago and grew to 6 feet 7 inches, tall enough to play forward on his high school basketball team and to earn an athletic scholarship to the University of Dubuque in Iowa. He moved to Southern California in the early 1970s and turned toward radio instead of basketball, working as a disc jockey on Los Angeles jazz and R&B stations including KJLH, KTWV and KKJZ, where he later served as program director, a parallel career that ran alongside his decades with the Lakers (NBC Los Angeles).

The Lakers hired him at the start of the 1982-83 season, and he called his first games from the Forum in Inglewood. His voice carried through the Showtime years, the Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant three-peat, Bryant's later championships, and the LeBron James era that followed, a run that spanned 10 NBA titles and 16 Western Conference championships and made him the longest-tenured public address announcer in franchise history (ESPN). He introduced Magic Johnson, James Worthy, O'Neal, Bryant and James by name so many times that fans came to know him simply by his own initials, LT. Courtside he was recognizable by his white goatee, his eight-panel cap and a baritone delivery colleagues described as restrained and professional rather than showy. Reporters covering the team noted he reportedly did not miss a Lakers game for more than two decades, from 1997 until a brief absence in 2018.

When the 2020 season resumed inside the NBA's bubble at Walt Disney World with no fans allowed in the arena, Tanter recorded player introductions from a home studio so his voice could still open every game (NBC Los Angeles). Five years later, on March 4, 2025, he had the microphone in his hands again when LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to reach 50,000 combined regular season and playoff points. "Ladies and gentlemen, we all have just witnessed history," Tanter told the crowd.

Lakers head coach JJ Redick, who had spent 15 seasons facing the team as a player before taking the job, said in March 2026 that Tanter's voice was iconic and that having him behind the microphone brought a certain comfort to an arena Redick had visited for years as an opponent. Tanter retired from the public address role that June after 43 seasons, moving into a new post as special advisor for game presentation, and the team had not named a successor by the time of his death. Lakers governor Jeanie Buss said he had been "an integral part of the Lakers gameday experience for more than four decades, setting the tone for countless memorable moments with his professionalism, energy and signature booming voice," adding that he had become "a trusted and unforgettable part of the Lakers experience" (ESPN).

Weeks before he died, Tanter sent a text message to ESPN reporter Dave McMenamin. It read, simply, "It's been a blessing."

What Lawrence Tanter leaves in Los Angeles is mostly sound. It is on the Lakers broadcast tape in the particular way he drew out "the Laker Girlssss" as the dance team left the floor, in the calls that introduced Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant by their real names for years before he introduced five different players by one name on a single February night, and in the jazz airchecks from KJLH, KTWV and KKJZ that carried his voice across Los Angeles radio for nearly as long as it carried through the arena.