NY TIMES
The enduring, clichéd myth of the Los Angeles Lakers — perpetuated mostly by envious fans in other cities — is that the franchise owes its aura to its surroundings. That Hollywood made the Lakers cool, and the sunshine made them desirable. That the city made the dynasty.
The premise is irresistible. Los Angeles is alluring in a way that few places are, a magnet for supreme talent, fame seekers of all types and anyone who loves palm trees. Glitz and glamour are the city’s birthright. Stars come. Championships follow.
The premise is false. Los Angeles did not make the Lakers great. Jerry Buss did.
Buss, the Lakers’ legendary owner, who died Monday at 80, was among the first to recognize that basketball is a production, that sports can be glamorous and that nothing sells like star power.
Buss created Showtime, the slogan that became synonymous with the charismatic running, gunning Lakers of the 1980s. He hired an in-house band. He created the Laker Girls, to make the experience at the Fabulous Forum a little more fabulous, to keep the fans entertained through every timeout.
It is, of course, the banners that ultimately set Buss apart, that qualify him as perhaps the greatest owner in North American sports history. Contrary to the mythology, the banners did not hang themselves.
The Lakers have the benefit of a large market and a temperate climate, but so do the Clippers, who have also called Los Angeles home for 29 years, with none of the presumed advantages of the 213 area code.
No one ever demanded a trade to the Clippers. In fact, many begged to be sent elsewhere.
What made the Lakers great was Buss, who in so many ways was the model owner, the sort that every fan wants: generous with his payroll, methodical in his decisions, competitive and engaged, but never a meddler.
Buss paid to acquire the best players, rarely thinking about his profit margin. He hired the best basketball minds — Jerry West, Pat Riley, Phil Jackson — and got out of their way, recognizing that riches do not equate to basketball expertise.
“His vision was second to none,” West said in a statement. “He wanted an N.B.A. franchise brand that represented the very best and went to every extreme to accomplish his goals.”
In West, Buss had a basketball savant running the show. And he gave him all the autonomy and resources he needed to build and rebuild the dynasty, from Magic and Kareem to Kobe and Shaq. After West stepped away, his protégé Mitch Kupchak refashioned the dynasty once more, acquiring Pau Gasol to help Kobe Bryant win two more titles.
It is sometimes forgotten amid the glow of all of those Larry O’Brien trophies, but the Lakers took a huge risk in the summer of 1996, tearing up their roster to make a (then-unprecedented) $120 million offer to Shaquille O’Neal. In the process, they traded their star center, Vlade Divac, to acquire the draft rights to Bryant, an unproven teenager. It was West who maneuvered the Lakers to create one of the greatest tandems, but it was Buss — a devoted and skilled poker player — who trusted and empowered West to make this calculated gamble.
“He’s meant everything to me,” Bryant said of Buss last week. “I mean, he took a chance on a 17-year-old kid coming out of Philadelphia when nobody really saw that potential. And he believed in me the entire way.”
Last summer, the Lakers struck again, acquiring Dwight Howard and Steve Nash, demonstrating once more Buss’s commitment to winning at all costs. The Lakers’ luxury-tax bill this season is a projected $30 million, and if the roster is kept intact, it could leap to as much as $78 million next season.
This has fueled another Lakers myth: that they simply spend their way to success. There is a sliver of truth here — no team can retain the best talent without spending generously — but the Lakers are not the league’s biggest spenders over the past decade. (The Lakers trail the Knicks, the Dallas Mavericks and the Portland Trail Blazers in taxes paid, according to the salary-cap expert Larry Coon.) Nor did Buss, a millionaire in a league of billionaires and corporations, have the deepest pockets.
The competitor in Buss always valued skills over spending power. When the luxury tax was introduced, Buss vowed never to cross the tax threshold. Not because he wanted to save money, but because he wanted to beat everyone on a level playing field.
“What they’re trying to do is say, ‘Let’s all have the same number of chips and we’ll see who can build a team the best,’ ” Buss said in 2000.
Eventually, other teams sprinted past the threshold, forcing Buss to do the same, but he was always the poker player at heart, angling to beat you with his intellect and his foresight and his bravado.
“I like the concept of having the same number of weapons and just see who can run the ship the best,” Buss said. “That’s competition.”
For the last 34 years, Buss was simply better at it than everyone else.