The Family Plan

In the mind of their patriarch, the Lakers were always a family affair, even if only his sons and daughters, who stood to inherit what Dad had wrought, took it seriously.

Even in recent years, as Jerry Buss named Jim assistant general manager of the Lakers, handed the business side to Jeanie and the Sparks to Johnny, speculation about an eventual sale never stopped.

In the ‘90s, the prevailing rumor had the Lakers going to Sony for a then unheard-of $500 million. More recently, speculation centered on Rupert Murdoch. Then it was Philip Anschutz, their Staples Center landlord, who bought 25% of the club along with a right of first refusal, should the team be put up for sale.

However, Jerry Buss never wavered. Last season it became clear that he was preparing for a succession, not a sale. Jim moved into decision-making at the highest level as his father put it squarely: “He’ll replace me.”

This occasioned no celebration amid the tumult of their season-long disaster with Shaquille O’Neal going, Rudy Tomjanovich fleeing and the good times ending with a thunderclap. Jim’s title had been ceremonial for years and within the organization, the reaction to his accession was more like resignation.

However, if Jim represented something new and scary, he also was starting to work alongside the professionals in the front office. Now, as he becomes aware that everything he says has impact, he’s learning to be circumspect too.

“I envisioned me getting to the point where I am now, and I’m very happy that it happened,” he said recently. “It’s the way to learn. Having all these guys, Jerry West, Mitch [Kupchak, the general manager], Ronnie [Lester, assistant general manager], you’re surrounded by all these guys who are great teachers.

“I’ve had eight years of teaching, and I’m learning every day. When I hear somebody say, ‘Are you qualified?’ I’m like, ‘If you had eight years of Jerry West, plus Mitch Kupchak and all the talented scouts working on a daily basis tutoring you, I don’t know what other credentials you could have.’ ”

Be it ever so zany, continuity means something. The Dodgers, who refined the family organization in half a century under Walter O’Malley, Branch Rickey and their heirs, were sold to Murdoch, who barely acknowledged they existed while his lieutenants cavalierly traded off Mike Piazza during a business call. Seven years later, the team was sold to Frank McCourt, a Boston developer who has run it under tight budget restraints while drawing 3.5 million fans annually.

The Lakers will, at least, be run by people who came up within the organization, however belatedly.

Of course, they have their own challenge, trying to create another phoenix from the ashes of the last one. It isn’t easy to follow Jerry Buss, even for Jerry Buss.

Not Quite Your Normal Dynasty

Jerry Buss wanted a crowd-pleasing basketball team the movie stars could relate to but might have gone too far. He wound up with the greatest floating soap opera in sports, and basketball was almost beside the point.

Buss has won eight titles in his 26 seasons, the most for any owner of any American major-sport team in that time, even more impressive for having been done in the age of the salary cap.

His franchise is a colossus. Laker finances are closely guarded, but the franchise is conservatively thought to gross more than $150 million and to net more than $50 million annually. Forbes has valued it at $500 million, an astounding total for a team that comes without real estate and an arena.

Estimates of the Lakers’ annual profits run as high as $75 million. Based on that figure, says Dwight Manley, a local player agent and a nationally known collector, the franchise would be worth $600 million to $700 million.

The Lakers don’t even have to play to captivate the nation. How many teams finish 11th, rehire their old coach and find themselves scheduled for the maximum eight appearances on national TV the next season?

This is based on the popular belief that sparks will be flying because of Jackson’s literary criticism of Kobe Bryant. And one of those games will be the now-traditional Christmas game against O’Neal’s Miami Heat, based on the popular belief that Shaq and Kobe will try to crush each other for the nation’s holiday viewing pleasure.

Nor are many 11th-place teams featured nightly on the new “ESPN Hollywood,” with Bryant and wife Vanessa pictured in the ads and Jeanie Buss explaining how the Lakers sprinkle movie stars throughout the crowd for maximum effect. This may be old here, but it still plays in the hinterland. But then, how many teams have a former Playboy model out front who is the owner’s daughter and the coach’s girlfriend?

For better or worse, Jerry’s kids and his franchise grew up in the fast lane. Long before “dysfunction” became the watchword of the Shaq-Kobe era, the Lakers were a wild bunch, downstairs as well as in the owner’s suite. They were serious when it was time to work, but after that, it was party time and they were on everyone’s A list. Jerry Buss’ children speak of him in tones of awe, but theirs was not a traditional childhood. Except for Janie, the youngest, who married and settled in the country, they didn’t lead ordinary lives.

Their father and mother, Joann, divorced in 1972, after which Dad set off to become the playboy of the western world, complete with photo albums of his girlfriends. He wasn’t always available to his children and when he was, wasn’t into telling them what they should or shouldn’t do.

Jerry Buss once told about the spring of 1990, when Pat Riley, who had driven his players to their limit, was trying to decide whether to go. Buss didn’t want to fire him, so they had a series of lunches, with Riley looking for a sign that Buss wanted him back, and getting none.

When Riley asked point-blank for guidance, Buss said he told him of a talk he’d had with one of his sons. His son had asked why he hadn’t kicked him through college, but he replied that wasn’t his way. “If I didn’t do it for my own son,” Jerry Buss said he told Riley, “I’m not going to do it for you.”

“I think that’s how he is with all of us,” Jim says. “It could have been me, but he’s just been a super father all the way through.

“At the time, you don’t know it, but later on, wow, he was there for me. He didn’t push me in the wrong direction or force me to do anything. He let me find myself and I appreciate that.”

Still, finding their way was hard. There’s no shortage of brains in the family, but neither son graduated from college. Johnny, the oldest at 48, ran the indoor soccer Lazers for several seasons, wrote screenplays, sang in a country and western band and raced Formula Three cars.

As head of the Sparks, he has won two WNBA titles but has also gone through six coaches in nine seasons, including his latest victim, Henry Bibby, and his latest replacement, Joe Bryant. Of Johnny’s six coaches, only Michael Cooper ever coached a full season.

Jim, now 44, was the personable, happy-go-lucky one who succeeded his older brother in running the Lazers and trained horses.

Jeanie, 43, was the motivated one who graduated from USC with honors, got the World TeamTennis Strings and then distinguished herself running the Forum.

Their loves and losses were chronicled in a 1997 Sports Illustrated profile that still makes the family shudder. It was filled with quotes suggesting the kids’ yearning to impress their father and sibling rivalry with each other.

For the maraschino cherry atop the sundae of their embarrassment, Jeanie, the one people had learned to take seriously, was pictured nude from the waist up, holding two basketballs in front of her chest. The story was titled “She’s Got Balls.”

Summing it up, SI’s Franz Lidz quoted an unnamed business associate of their father as saying, “It’s crazy. Johnny dithers and broods. Jimmy is easily distracted and has no instinct for the jugular. Jeanie is the most capable one, yet she’s overlooked by her loving dad. Does Jerry honestly think this arrangement will work? I’m willing to bet -- no, I guarantee -- that within three years he sells the entire operation to Rupert Murdoch.”

That was eight years ago, and Murdoch is no longer in the market for teams. The Busses are still here, though, and digging in for the long haul.

The Sons Also Rise

There’s nothing unusual about turning the family business over to the kids, whether it’s New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner designating son-in-law Steve Swindal as his successor, or Cablevision boss Charles Dolan turning over Madison Square Garden, the Knicks and Rangers to his son, James.

Of course, as Knick and Ranger fans could tell you, continuity isn’t everything either.

In Jerry Buss’ first 21 seasons, he and Jerry West were an ideal team. Buss, who as a fan had idolized West, had brought him into the front office, offering him a role in his first season after West had burned himself out on coaching.

Except for its top executives, the front office was run on a shoestring. It wasn’t as big as the others, or as well-paid, and used technology that was years behind. In the ‘80s, the Lakers didn’t even bother to send a representative to the league’s annual marketing meeting.

“There was no Laker front office,” says a onetime staffer, who arrived in the ‘90s. “There was just Jerry West.”

Nothing counts more than knowing what you’re doing, though. Buss and West skipped from one dynasty to another, bringing in O’Neal and Bryant five years after Magic Johnson had retired in 1991.

Buss, who previously had drunk with the writers in the Forum press lounge until the early hours of the morning, began to withdraw in the ‘90s. Now in his 60s, he started thinking about issues of succession and, in 1997, appointed Jim assistant GM.

Jim went on some scouting trips with West and Kupchak and attended meetings. However, like his father, Jim lived in San Diego County and didn’t work out of the office. He wasn’t shy about voicing his opinion but in the presence of the legends, West and then Jackson, it counted for little.

In the last two seasons, however, Jim began traveling with the team, increasing his involvement and learning curve dramatically. Still, he went into last season with the same assistant GM title as Lester. They shared a page in the media guide. Lester was on top, with a bigger bio.

Even as his father began making it clear that Jim was in the loop last season, there were reports that Jim was second-guessing Kupchak behind the scenes, setting off alarm bells.

The unrest got into the press, which recalled Jim’s declaration in SI that 10 guys in a bar could draft as well as NBA scouts. In another anecdote that got wide circulation, Jim was reported to have defended giving Tomjanovich his huge $6-million salary, saying that was standard pay.

Whether the stories were exactly true or represented Jim’s real feelings then or now, the real problem was, they were coming from the Laker front office.

The end of the 2004-05 season was a bad time for the Lakers. The team had fractured, teammates pointed fingers at Bryant, and Jerry Buss had yet to reconcile himself to bringing Jackson back at $10 million a year, after having just persuaded himself to let him go. The fans were so upset that Kupchak was obliged to reassure season-ticket holders in a town hall meeting. Had it ended on such a downer, there’s no telling what knives might have been unsheathed. Instead, Jerry Buss rehired Jackson, who was hailed as if he were Lindbergh returning from Paris, and everyone’s spirits revived.

In a surprise, the NBA draft suggested that the front office, which had seemed to comprise so many new elements, with Kupchak now flanked by Jackson and Jim Buss, was unified. Disregarding the time frame suggested by Jackson’s three-year deal, they went for broke, drafting prep center Andrew Bynum, who has a big upside but isn’t expected to realize much of it in Jackson’s time.

This represented a turn from any more illusions the Busses harbored about instant turnarounds. Jim was part of the delegation that fell in love with Bynum at the pre-draft camp in Chicago, attending along with Kupchak, Lester and Kurt Rambis. Jim now quotes Lester, who said Bynum was “like clay we can mold.”

In other words, the front office still performs in a more functional way than one might expect after all the comings, goings and lifestyles-of-the-rich-and-famous adventures.

Trained by his father, who always went for broke trying to be great and does still, Jim says he’ll run the team the same way.

“One hundred percent,” he says. “That’s why we’re moving in the direction of having cap room. Because if you keep mending your team every year after making a trade like Shaq, then you’re just going to be an average team, maybe make the playoffs, [reach the] first, second round. That’s not the goal.

“The goal is to make a big step. Well, the only way you can do that is to get a free agent two years from now and you know who they are and so do we. Everybody knows. So we’re positioning ourselves to be great.

“That’s how my dad ran this team, and that’s definitely how I’ll run it. We don’t want to be first-round guys. That’s not the point of the game, I think....

“My sister and I, we’ve talked about it. Our goal is to keep going and going. I think L.A. would appreciate that too.”

Their father is 72 and should provide a guiding hand for a while but is expected to withdraw further as Jim’s day-to-day involvement increases.

In the Dodgers’ case, as in so many others, Peter O’Malley feared inheritance taxes would force a sale after his death and cashed out. However, insiders say Jerry Buss is making other arrangements, buying insurance and prepaying taxes so his children can carry on.

As H.I., the lovable kidnapper in the movie “Raising Arizona,” muses after he and his wife have made off with one of the Arizona quintuplets, “Well, it sure ain’t Ozzie and Harriet.”

And it ain’t over, either.