On Sunday, the Los Angeles Times published an excerpt from Jeanie Buss‘ updated memoir, Laker Girl. In the passage, Jeanie writes about the events surrounding the Lakers’ firing of Mike Brown and ensuing hire of Mike D’Antoni, but only after reaching out to her fiancé Phil Jackson first.
The dirt between the Buss siblings, Jim Buss and Jeanie Buss, has been simmering beneath the surface of all the turmoil facing the franchise this offseason. They lost out on Dwight Howard to Houston, and lost Kobe Bryant to the injury Gods after he tore his Achilles tendon right before the 2013 Playoffs began.
Through it all, the Buss siblings have attempted to present a united front; except, with a host of quotes from inside sources, and information leaking about behind-the-scenes turbulence, we never really believed all was OK in LA especially where Phil Jackson was concerned. Now there’s proof in the form of the updated Jeanie Buss memoir, helpfully reprinted by the Los Angeles Times on Sunday.
First, we’ll provide some context before the money quote from the excerpt: five games into the 2012-13 season, the Los Angeles Lakers fired coach Mike Brown after he started 1-4 and lost the respect of his star-packed roster, including Kobe, Dwight and Steve Nash. Jeanie makes it seem in the memoir as if Brown isn’t given a fair shake — at least according to the Zen Master.
I first heard the rumors on radio. Then, my brother called to tell me it was official. Mike Brown was out.
“I support you in whatever decision you make,” I told Jim. “I understand.”
That’s all I said to him.
Phil called me from the gym after he saw the news on ESPN. “That’s not right,” he said. “It’s not enough time for a coach. I don’t care who it is. You don’t fire a coach five games in.”…
That’s when Jeanie’s brother Jim asks her for Phil’s phone number and wonders whether they can work together despite a rather rocky tenure between the two the last time Phil coached the Lakers.
Jim goes to Phil’s house while Jeanie takes her dog for a drive (LA!). Jim also brought Lakers GM Mitch Kupchak to the meeting despite the coaching search still being — according to Jeanie — in the preliminary stages. Jackson doesn’t have his agent with him, and the talk was only about Jackson’s assessment of individual Laker players rather than any demands should be be offered the position.
Then, Sunday night, Phil gets the phone call from Mitch telling him the Lakers had hired D’Antoni. The news surprised Jackson, and “devasated” Jeanie.
Keep reading to hear Jeanie’s side of the story…
Here’s how Jeanie describes that fateful Sunday night last fall when she and Phil heard that D’Antoni had been hired:
After we went to bed, the house phone rang at 11:30. I heard Phil pick it up and say, “Okay, alright. Okay.”
When he hung up, I asked him what that was about, and he said, “Mitch called to tell me they’ve hired D’Antoni. He said that they feel given the personnel they have that D’Antoni is a better fit. He said they know they are going to take a bit of a PR hit, but he thinks it will blow over in a month.”
“He said it will blow over in a month?” I repeated in disbelief.
I was still trying to wake up.
I was stunned. I said to Phil, “They came to you. You were not looking for the job. I cannot believe this.”
I knew Phil wasn’t going to argue with them.
“That was really odd,” he said in the quiet of our bedroom as he replayed the conversation in his mind.
My first thought was, What was the rush? Why did they have to make a decision tonight?
I didn’t have much time to reflect because my cell phone started going crazy.
By the next day, stories began coming out in the media that Phil wanted part ownership of the team, had demanded a ridiculous salary, and had insisted on not traveling with the team on some of our road trips.
None of that was true. . . .
Two days after Phil got that phone call, I was at the gym when I started crying so hysterically that they sent me home.
My sister, Janie, knew the whole situation was tearing me apart, but I don’t think anybody else in my family understood how much it had hurt me. It physically hurt me.
The sequence of events — Phil almost coming back and then being told someone else was better for the job — practically destroyed me. It almost took away my passion for this job and this game. It felt like I had been stabbed in the back. It was a betrayal. I was devastated.
I felt that I got played. Why did they have to do that? Why did Jim pull Phil back into the mix if he wasn’t sincere about it? . . .
Phil wasn’t looking for the job, and then he wasted 36 hours of his life preparing for it when they were never in a million years going to hire him anyway.
How do you do that to your sister? How do you do that to Phil Jackson?
I hope the flirtation with Phil wasn’t just a PR stunt. I still can’t get my head around the whole story.
As we know, Jim Buss has said publicly that his late father Jerry Buss didn’t think Phil was a long-term option as head coach. But that doesn’t appease Jeanie, who still wonders why they included Jackson in their search if they weren’t going to hire him in the first place (emphasis ours).
The story going around is that my dad pushed for D’Antoni because he wanted to go back to playing Showtime basketball. But there was only one Showtime, never to be replicated. My dad knew that.
I know my father would back my brother in whatever decision Jim wanted to make. That was exactly how my dad was with the decisions I had to make in regard to business matters.
My dad made it clear to the entire family that he put me in charge of the team’s business operations and my brother was in charge of the basketball decisions. He wanted that structure in place to carry us forward when he was no longer running the show.
What is not clear to me is why, if they had their doubts about Phil being physically able to coach, they hired a guy who was still recovering after having his knee replaced? D’Antoni wasn’t physically prepared to hit the ground running with the season already underway.
Despite my brother’s desire to open up the channels of communication between us, we still rarely if ever discuss basketball. That should be okay because my dad was confident the franchise could be run that way. But I want my brother to realize that I’m not the enemy.
There’s still a lot of animosity between the children of Dr. Jerry Buss. They now run separate arms of the Lakers organization, with Jeanie taking the business side and Jim taking the basketball side. The Lakers have continued beyond Dr. Buss’ unfortunate passing, aided by his children, but those children don’t appear to be communicating as well with each other as they do with the press. That could be their undoing as brother and sister, but also the undoing of the Lakers organization Jerry Buss started building almost 35 years ago.
[Los Angeles Times; H/T: EOB]
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