Jim Buss is not an idiot.
No, really, I mean it.
For years, if you turned on talk radio, or read stuff newspaper people like, say, me wrote, you got the impression it was the owner’s kid who screwed up the Lakers, culminating in his decisions to let arch-nemeses Phil Jackson walk in 2010 and to hire Mike D’Antoni instead of Phil in 2012.
Actually, Jim’s father made both of those decisions.
There’s a moral here: Even greats – and Jerry Buss was the greatest NBA owner of them all – screw up.
There definitely was a time after his father brought Jim into the organization in the late ‘90s when he looked like he was ticking, like a time bomb.
I used to compare it to Jed Clampett turning the Beverly Hillbillies over to Cousin Jethro as often as I could get it in the paper. I even heard that Jerry once laughingly addressed his son as “Jethro.”
Jim was supposed to apprentice under GM Jerry West but he didn’t show up in the office every day, or many days, as if it was a real job.
—- Go through the journey along with the Lakers starting line-up with this wallpaper! —-
As opposed to hanging out with Laker staffers on scouting trips, Jim took his friend, Chaz.
Showing how clueless Jim was to;
1) Think it, and
2) Tell a writer, Jim told Sports Illustrated’s Franz Lidz, who wrote the definitive story on the Buss kids, “evaluating basketball talent is not too difficult. If you grabbed 10 fans out of a bar and asked them to rate prospects, their opinions would be pretty much identical to those of the pro scouts.”
Nevertheless, Jim was part of the decision-making process by 2004 when his father traded Shaquille O’Neal and showed Jackson the door for the first time, to keep free agent Kobe Bryant.
As far as debuts went, Jim’s didn’t look too good when a story got out about Jim telling his sister, Jeanie, that Rudy’s five-year, $30 million deal was what good NBA coaches made.
As if. It was the biggest contract in coaching, matching what they had paid Jackson, coming off six titles in Chicago, to win three more in his first Laker stint.
Worse, the leak came from someone close to Jeanie with a fondness for emailing press people, tipping off the in-house rivalry.
Nor did it help when the new era got off to a disastrous start as the team went 34-48, and Rudy T. went over the hill.
Actually, Tomjanovich’s departure was a stroke of luck. Rudy T., a recovering alcoholic who was alarmed at his stress level as he tried to live up to Laker expectations—they didn’t want him to even use the “R word” for “rebuilding”–high-tailed it out of here, leaving behind his five-year, $30 million deal.
And making it possible to rehire Jackson.
At that point, Jim was thought to be skeptical of Kupchak, who was then under the gun all around, with a season ticket holder at a “town hall” meeting asking Mitch to resign to his face.
Next Page: Jim Buss Takes The Reigns, Lakers Still Find Success
Assistant GM Ronnie Lester had just gone wide-eyed at an East Coast workout by Andrew Bynum, a late-blooming butterball of a prep seven-footer.
The Lakers worked Bynum out privately before the pre-draft camp in Chicago. Jim, part of their delegation, caught the excitement with the rest of the staff—a major development since Kupchak would need his help convincing his father to take a unknown high school kid with their No. 10 pick.
Jim sold it to his father. The Lakers picked Bynum, who would become an All-Star starter at 24. Of the other two players they considered at No. 10, one (Sean May) is out of the NBA and the other (Fran Vasquez) never arrived.
By 2011, following the inglorious end to their three-Finals-two-titles run in a second-round sweep by Dallas, Jim was in charge.
The decision to hire Mike Brown was Jim’s, and unpopular. (My feeling was, if they wanted a slow-down, defense-oriented coach from the East, there was a better one available, with enough personality to give him a chance of succeeding the one and only Phil – Jeff Van Gundy).
Nor did Brown work out well, lasting one season plus five games.
Nevertheless, the hire was not outrageous, irresponsible or dumb.
First, Jim made it with the counsel of his basketball people, after Kupchak included Brown’s name among possible candidates.
Two, a lot of sharp people like Brown—including West, by then a Warriors consultant—oh, yeah, now there’s something that shouldn’t have been allowed to happen–who intended to hire Brown themselves before the Lakers jumped in.
Bottom line, if Jim was highly entitled and clueless upon arrival, he has essentially served a 15-year apprenticeship, watching West put together the team that won titles in 2000-2001-2002, and, after the fall of 2004, helping turn it back around, leading to the titles of 2009-2010, working with his father and Kupchak.
There were two things I admired in Jerry Buss:
1) His go-for-it attitude, with excellence the goal, even beyond profits, and;
2) His abiding trust in his professionals.
Jim has been there and done that. He was part of trading his fave, Andrew. He was part of the calm, measured deliberations to keep Dwight Howard at the trade deadline, when so many (hello) called for them to trade him.
Bottom line, if they need to trade Howard after all, they can do it after this season.
And, as Kupchak explained, steadfastly: “It’s hard to get talent in this league and to have a talent like Dwight Howard. He belongs to have his name on the wall and a statue in front of Staples at some point in time.”
We’ll have to wait and see about the banner and the statue, but Dwight has looked a lot more interested the last few games. After a half-season of arguing with teammates and refusing to commit himself in any way, he threw out his first hint he wants to stay, noting he and Kobe “have years to play with each other.”
So, if they don’t look like the Lakers on the floor and won’t for a while, with say, an 80 percent chance they’ll either be out in the first round or miss the playoffs altogether, this won’t be the first season they fell on their face.
As far as the front office goes, wiggy as it has always been, it has been that sharp, and it still looks the same way to me.