He’s All In

Ever the gambler, Laker owner Jerry Buss has dealt himself another new hand, assembling a team that might or might not be a winner, the poker equivalent of a pair of jacks in five-card draw.

He wagered $30 million on a three-year contract for Coach Phil Jackson. He signed off on trading for Kwame Brown, a washout in Washington. He nodded affirmatively when he heard about 17-year-old Andrew Bynum. He oversaw an off-season that brought relatively unknown Smush Parker as a possible starter.

Although most preseason predictions have pegged the Lakers as a borderline playoff team, settling somewhere from eighth to 10th in the Western Conference, Buss expects a postseason appearance. He thinks he’s holding a full house.

“I think it’s going to be a really exciting year,” Buss said late Tuesday night in his first public comments since last season. “I can’t imagine a time where you’re looking to see what’s going to happen and being this excited as I am this year.

“I believe we’ll make the playoffs. I have a lot of confidence in that. How well we go beyond that, there’s a couple of key factors. Kwame. Can Smush hold his own as a starting guard with a premier franchise? It’s hard to say.

“Kobe [Bryant], I think, is going to be sensational. This is the year I think that we’ve always wished for, and I think we’ll see it. Overall I’m excited and I think we’re going to do very well.”

The Lakers finished 34-48 and tied for 11th in the West last season, a performance Buss doesn’t want to repeat.

“I don’t think I could take that,” he said. “God forbid, injuries and everything, you have to allow for that like we did last year. I personally think if Vlade Divac had played, Kobe had not missed 20 games, Lamar hadn’t lost 20 games, we hadn’t lost a coach in the middle of the season, Devean George missed 80 games, I think we would have made the playoffs. I was still very disappointed and, regardless of what happens, if we don’t make it this year, I will be disappointed.”

Eight weeks passed from when their season ended in April to the day the Lakers hired Jackson, as the sides determined just how much of a match they might be. That led, to paraphrase Jackson, to the longest pregnant pause in NBA history.

However, Buss said all has gone well with the $30-million man in the fold.

In a way, Jackson never escaped Buss’ periphery because of his romantic relationship with Buss’ daughter, Jeanie.

“You’ve got to remember that even when Phil left, I was having dinner with him every two weeks because of the family connection,” Buss said. “It’s not like suddenly he was gone and came back. We didn’t talk basketball during the summer, but we were always around. I think in the back of his head he knew that this is where he belonged and I think I did too.”

Buss senses a renewed and invigorated Jackson, one who has left behind the buildup of five years of expectations that scattered for good amid the fruitless 2003-04 finale in Detroit.

“I think the year off did him a lot of good,” Buss said. “I think it did me a lot of good. These things are so tense and so stressful that when you go through five years like that, it’s time for a sabbatical.”

Jackson returns to a roster stocked with significantly less talent than the one he last guided.

The Lakers remain hemmed in by the salary cap until the summer of 2007, free to try to improve themselves via trades and the draft but facing the reality that signing a free agent who would make a Shaquille O’Neal-type splash wouldn’t be likely for another three years, if at all.

Yao Ming and Amare Stoudemire recently signed long-term deals to stay with their teams instead of testing the market in 2007, meaning the next crop of promising young free agents -- LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony -- won’t be available until 2008, if they decide to pass up presumed maximum contract offers from their own teams.

Buss remains resolute.

“Our feeling is, sooner or later, if we’re in a position to gather an All-Star, we will,” he said.