Lakers’ Buss stays course, blocks out the naysayers
Jim Buss has wondered why he has become a punching bag.
The part-owner and executive vice president of basketball operations for the Los Angeles Lakers recoiled at the mention of how people are generally averse to a nepotistic rise, noting he’d been working for the team in the front office for nearly 15 years before his father, Jerry Buss, died in February 2013.
Buss, an affable sort, knows the only way out of this public relations nightmare is to win. And contrary to popular belief, he’s sure that day is coming sometime soon.
“In today’s society, you see bullying,” said Buss, the second oldest of six Buss siblings and one of five working for the team. “You see the effects of it. I think it’s unfair. But I get it. (Lakers general manager) Mitch (Kupchak) and my dad said winning cures everything. I guess I came to the conclusion that not only do I want to win but that also cures any past conception of me. So that’s what I’m going to do.”
The sooner the better. The clock is ticking on his tenure. A MAN UNDETERRED As heirs-to-the-throne go, Jim Buss, 55, hardly took the Prince
Charles route.
He was 20 when his father paid Jack Kent Cooke $67 million for the Lakers, the NHL’s Kings and the Forum in 1979 yet wouldn’t join the team’s basketball front office until 18 seasons and five championships later. In between, when he wasn’t studying math at Southern California, training Thoroughbreds, running the family’s professional soccer team or working in management positions at the Forum, he was doing the sorts of odd jobs that still spark a chuckle.
“We started the family together at the Forum, where we were selling tickets,” Buss said. “We were basically mom and pop all the way down to selling peanuts. I was Mr. Peanut, and we had to do it. It was part of the Forum. I was the Cookie Monster for the Ice Capades. They needed it.”
That was a lifetime ago, and what’s apparent is that the decades of ridicule have not damaged his confidence.
“(If ) I would have taken credit for all the moves we won championships for, then I would have a résumé; I don’t have a résumé,” Buss said. “So my résumé is just me all of a sudden taking over, which isn’t true.
“The thing that most people don’t understand is that I’ve been doing this for 20 years. I worked with Jerry West. But it doesn’t have any teeth, doesn’t have any legs. I was very much part of the final decisions on all of the championships that we’ve won in the last 20 years.”
Buss’ reverence for West is unmistakable, because of not only the four seasons they spent working together but the support he has received from him since.
A few years back, West penned a letter that inspires Buss still. What Buss remembers is how it made him feel to get that kind of validation from one of the game’s most respected minds.
“He wrote me a letter just on the cruelty of the media of what I was going through,” Buss said. “It’s unreal. He sits there and he talks about, ‘ You have to understand that these are people who have no idea what they’re talking about. They have a motive. They have an agenda. Don’t take it wrong. You’re doing the right thing.’ It just went on and on, unprovoked. It was like, ‘ OK, thank you.’ ”
West encouraged Jim to follow his passion for number-crunching as a way to analyze players. Even with recent changes to their analytics wing, the Lakers are considered to be behind the times. Yet Buss, who has an individualized “impact value” system to evaluate players on his iPad that he updates almost every night before going to bed, has been pushing for change for quite some time.
“I told him to follow his instincts,” said West, whose son, Ryan, has worked for the Lakers since 2009 and recently was promoted to director of player personnel. “He would have a lot of analytical people (around), and a lot of people think that I can’t stand analytical people, and that’s not the case at all.
“He’s really smart … but he’s the easiest target there is. And I will tell you, it’s grossly unfair sometimes. It’s almost like they want him to be a reincarnation of his dad, but he can’t.”
Buss sees much of the negativity that surrounds him as an indictment of today’s society, a culture of bullying. And the fans, he says, are nothing but non-stop kindness.
“Pictures, letters — all positive; the negative is always a minority,” he says. “They love me. They really love me.”
Better for him to block out all that noise and instead listen to his sages.
“If Jerry West said, ‘ Jim Buss doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing ’ … that would hurt; I don’t know what I would do then,” Buss explains. “If (former Lakers coach and current Miami Heat President) Pat Riley came out and said, ‘Jim Buss doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s leading the Lakers down the wrong path,’ I’d be like, ‘(Expletive), I have to look in the mirror.’ If it’s coming from someone who knows, and someone I respect, then I’ve got to look at myself. But that has never happened. All I do is get fantastic feedback from these guys.” His list includes Kobe Bryant. “If Kobe came out and said, ‘Jim Buss doesn’t know what he’s doing,’ I’d be hurt as hell,” Buss said. “He and I have worked together for 20 years, so first off, I’d probably go, ‘Why the hell didn’t you say this five years ago, dude? If I didn’t know what I was doing, why would you let me do this?’ ”
Yet while Bryant has been mostly supportive of Buss, there have been moments. The central theme of his criticism, as is also the case with sister Jeanie Buss, has been his frustration that former coach Phil Jackson was never welcomed back.
Bryant kept quiet when Jackson was passed up in favor of Mike D’Antoni in November 2012. But in March 2014, just days before Jackson finalized his deal to become president of the New York Knicks despite his desire to return to Los Angeles, Bryant told reporters, “Personally, it would be hard for me to understand that happening twice. I don’t really get it.” Nor did Jeanie, who equated the D’Antoniover-Jackson decision to being “stabbed in the back” and said it “practically destroyed me” in her book Laker Girl.
Jim doesn’t mention the pointed words that have come from Bryant, but it’s clear he hasn’t forgotten about Magic Johnson, who has repeatedly called him out. From Johnson’s angry tweets about the D’Antoni decision to the television tour eight months ago when he raised serious questions about Buss’ ability as an executive, Johnson has made his feelings known.
“Magic Johnson going nuts on me?” he says with a laugh.
“It’s like, ‘Really, dude? My dad made you a billionaire almost. Really? Where are you coming from?’ ”
Johnson — who sold his share of the Lakers in 2010 and two years later led the ownership group that paid $2 billion for the Los Angeles Dodgers — earned about $43 million during his playing days and has been successful in the business sector since (a 2011 Forbes report estimated his net worth at $525 million).
When asked about Buss’ comment, Johnson issued a statement to USA TODAY Sports.
“It’s all about winning, Jim,” Johnson said.
On that they can agree. TURNING THE CORNER Jim Buss is bullish on the young core of No. 2 pick D’Angelo Russell, Jordan Clarkson and Julius Randle. And whether Bryant decides to return next summer or retire, he speaks with optimism that the up-and-comers will be dynamic enough to attract toptier talent.
“I think we’ve done a great job (rebuilding),” he said. “Yeah, I think we’re in dynamite position. Not good position — dynamite. I think we’ve turned the corner. I don’t know if you discount that terminology, ‘turn the corner.’ But when you’re headed down the wrong road and you can finally get off that road and turn the corner, that’s huge, in my opinion.”
“We’re ahead of (the schedule),” he said. “So I’m fine with it. I think we’ve turned the corner, exactly like we have (planned). Get a free agent next (summer), and then I think we compete.”
When pressed on the matter of when the deadline date will be, Buss said, “Two more full seasons, a summer of change and then let that season go. Whatever happens in that third season, that’s fine. I have no problem with that. I think we’re that close.”
Yet Jeanie, the Lakers president, told USA TODAY Sports that she was perplexed by that characterization of the timeline.
“He has given me a timeline, and I have no reason to think that they won’t have a competitive team by the deadline,” Jeanie said.
That deadline, she was asked, is the end of the 2016-17 season?
“Yes,” she said. “Not this season, but the end of next season, which will be the summer of 2017.”
Jim scoffs at the notion there is tension between him and Jeanie.
“I live for this,” Buss said. “The entire family, even the ones who don’t day-to-day work for the team, they bleed purple and gold without a doubt.
“I’m extremely confident. … You hear what Vegas says, that we’re not supposed to make it (to the playoffs this season). We’ll prove them wrong.”