HoopsHype.com NBA Blogs - Roland Lazenby

The greatest NBA free agent of all time, LeBron James, is quietly making overtures to the Los Angeles Lakers.

He wants to play for them. And James is not all that concerned whether Kobe Bryant is part of the equation. Bryant, of course, has yet to sign a contract extension with L.A. and could wind up a free-agent himself, albeit one with high mileage.

But the overtures have been made. LeBron wants to wear the purple and gold. Mainly, he wants to wear a championship ring, which means he wants to play for Lakers coach Phil Jackson.

“LeBron wants to win. He’s a smart guy,” explains one of my best inside sources, a close Jackson associate. “And Phil loves LeBron, absolutely LOVES him.”

There are many, many complicating factors to such a scenario, not the least of which is the fact that it’s way far from certain that Jackson will even be the coach of the Lakers next year.

“The Lakers have not made Phil an offer,” the Jackson source points out. However, rest assured of this, Jackson’s close associate maintained. “Phil will coach somewhere next year.”

Jackson wouldn’t dare take off next year if he’s not coaching the Lakers because he believes the following year will bring a lock-out, the source says. Jackson craves the chance to win another title before the NBA owners lock out the players in 2011-2012 to force a new contract.

“The whole league is under review,” the source points out. “Franchise values are falling, so the owners feel they must force a new labor agreement.”

The lock-out will bring a lost season, and the 64-year-old Jackson doesn’t want to miss two campaigns. So Jackson could wind up coaching Bron with another team next year, such as the New York Knickerbockers.

If all of this sounds fabulous, that’s because it is. These are strange days indeed for the NBA, and for the Lakers, with the planets aligning or converging or whatever with the upcoming off-season. “It feels like there’s a reckoning coming,” the Jackson source said.

THE TITANIC STRUGGLE

If you listen closely, you can hear the heavy breathing and grunting emanating from the Lakers offices beside the freeway in El Segundo. Behind the scenes, folks are wrestling for control of the franchise’s future, if not its very soul.

In other words, they’re partying like it’s 1998. That, of course, is a reference to the last time Jackson played multi-dimensional, high stakes poker with the owners of a team he was coaching.

There are those who think Jackson won that ’90s showdown when he coached the Chicago Bulls to their sixth title in the midst of a very ugly battle for control of the team, then walked away.

But if you ask Bulls superstar Michael Jordan, the experience, in retrospect, sure doesn’t smell anything like victory. Instead, 1998 still clings to his nostrils like the torturous stench of missed opportunity.

If everybody had been a mench, or at least an adult, Jordan could have kept playing for those Bulls and could have kept winning titles until somebody mustered the chutzpah to step up and stop him. As it is, Jordan sort of hangs in the shadows of the NBA these days, a mere ghost of the great competitive spirit that once struck fear everywhere.

I hope Kobe Bryant gets a good long look at him. MJ has always been Bryant’s guide star. They’ve played forthe same coach, in the same system, filled the same role with the same mannerisms and got some of the same results.

Bryant even knows that missed-opportunity aroma, dating back to 2004 when the Lakers blew up a championship steamroller, traded center Shaquille O’Neal and fired Phil Jackson.

Now, after rehiring Jackson a year later, the L.A. franchise has put together another club that could roll to a run of titles, and once again the whole thing is threatened by childish parlor games.

A cynic might say that these are the sort of monopolistic board games that an adolescent Jackson used to enjoy playing with his mother Betty. But you can’t really pin this current Lakers conflict solely on Phil.

He and 76-year-old Lakers owner Jerry Buss sort of deserve each other. They are the two best minds in the NBA, and you knew that eventually they were headed for a showdown for all the stakes, sort of like the finalists in the World Series Of Poker Tournament For All Eternity. For all their success together, Jerry Buss and PJ are just not a good mix. Jackson is “much to himself. He has his own thing.”

Jerry longs for the run and gun days of his 1980s Showtime Lakers teams. But Phil runs the frickin’ triangle, for chrissakes.  “Phil’s just not sexy enough for Dr. Buss,” explains Jackson’s confidant. In all his years, though, Buss has never encountered an adversary like Jackson, who jumped in bed with the owner’s sexy daughter Jeaniejust days after coming to the Lakers in 1999. With that one brilliant move, Phil had Dr. Buss in check.

Soon Jackson was winning championships and charging Buss $12 million a season to do it. Buss has hated paying that much for a mere coach, especially one that was tupping his daughter. His counter move on Jackson was to vest power and control in the hands of son Jim, already a competitor with Jeanie Buss for daddy’s love and control of the franchise. The whole scenario has Jeanie quite upset and telling her friends, “They’re going to do this again. They don’t even care if he wins the championship this year.” Jeanie, of course, is making reference to the 2004 firing of Jackson by Jim and Jerry Buss.

She was particularly angered that Jerry Buss entertained former Laker (and rumored Jackson replacement) Byron Scott into the owner’s suite on the night Jackson became the winningest coach in Lakers history. “Jeanie was really upset by it,” the confidant said. “But Phil took the high road… He said (an agent) put Scott in the owner’s suite so he could get the Clippers job. They wanted to make it look like the Lakers were interested to get the Clippers to bite.”

Jeanie apparently doesn’t buy that. One fabulous scenario has Phil, Kobe and Jeanie all going to the cross-town Clippers in an off-season package deal, but that seems a bit dramatic. The circumstances have left Jeanie with agonizingly divided loyalties. She adores Jackson but feels the ties to her father and brother no matter how much their chauvinism irks her. She is the executive who runs the team, but her father insists on turning the real power of the franchise over to Jim.

In the middle of it all, Jeanie and Jim still hold onto sibling affection, the confidant quipped. “Trust funds make strange bedfellows.” Jackson himself has been quite accommodating of Jim Buss, who travels with the team frequently if for no other reason than to remind the coach of the value of young center Andrew Bynum. Jim Buss believes Bynum is the next Kareem Abdul-Jabbar while the coaching staff would like Bynum to quit pouting about shots and anchor the defense with enthusiasm.

“Phil puts up with it,” the confidant said of his exchanges with Jim Buss. “I was talking to your brother…,” Jackson will tell Jeanie in informing her of events. The wild card in all of this is Bryant himself. Jackson’s camp wonders why the L.A. press hasn’t put questions to Bryant to get him to complain that Jackson is being driven out. Jordan spoke out on Jackson’s behalf early in the 1997-98 season, and that enhanced the coach’s power in his struggle with Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf and GM Jerry Krause.

“Kobe’s the only guy that can press the issue as a Laker,” Jackson’s confidant explained. “What Kobe says will speak volumes. Kobe could go to management right now and say he wants to spend the rest of his career as a Laker with PJ as his coach.” This time around, though, Bryant has kept his own counsel and stayed above the fray. Perhaps he has sought advice from Jordan, who felt let down when Jackson walked away after the 1998 championship. Jordan got into the fight and spoke up for Phil but still lost the balance of his career when Jackson quit anyway.

Bryant certainly knows that the best way to guarantee that Jackson spends another year with the team is to win a second straight championship for the Lakers. That’s chore enough for the team’s star, one that requiresplenty of focus. In the final analysis, that’s certainly the main argument for Jim and Jerry Buss bringing the speculation to an end. Jackson has brought them lots of money and value with his wins. Saving $7 million a year with Byron Scott is nothing next to what they’ve gained with Jackson at the helm.

In Chicago in 1998, Jackson and the Bulls rode all the speculation and tension to a title. But there are doubts that will work this time around. Yes, the Lakers are holding their own at the top of the Western Conference, but as Jackson’s source pointed out, “It’s incredible how miserable they seem winning.” That in itself may clear up Bron’s future as well. A title in Cleveland means he likely stays put. A title in L.A. could turn the quiet overtures into serious negotiations.

Roland Lazenby is the author of ‘Jerry West, the life and legend of a basketball icon‘, just released by ESPN books.

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We’ll begin this one with an ancient line from Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.

“We have all been here before.”

Damn, Phil Jackson is masterful. Well, most of the time.

He just happens to pick the world’s largest media market to launch his counter-attack. Jackson is the king of mismatches, whether it’s on the basketball floor, or in his media wars for control of a franchise.

In his pre-game chat with the media before the Los Angeles Lakers played the New Jersey Nets, Jackson casually floated the notion that he might not coach next year.

Oh, the stories that reporters have launched from that one.

The only problem is, Jackson was too coy to complete the equation for them. He identified his concerns and anxiety. He mentioned the state of the franchise, the success of the team, his salary, his feelings – all as factors in whether he returns next year as coach of the Lakers.

But he smartly left it to the media themselves to connect the dots as to the cause of his anxiety. Actually the math isn’t all that complicated.

Frankly, I began wondering about two months ago and trying to figure when the shoe was going to fall.

You see, the drama, or the latest act of the drama, actually began at the start of the season when Lakers owner Jerry Buss brought son Jim out for his yearly meeting with the media.

Jerry picked the moment to announce that he was stepping back and turning the franchise over to son Jim.

Think about the insult of that for the power couple of daughter Jeanie Buss and longtime boyfriend Jackson.

Let’s see, the California economy has been in a free fall, literally a disaster, for more than a year now. Yet, Jeanie Buss has brought in season-ticket renewals at something very close to a perfect one hundred percent. She has taken the traditionally cold and indifferent face of the franchise and made a warm, welcoming community in Staples Center. She’s there every night on the front row, greeting season ticket holders taking care of problems, making sure the team runs like a charm.

She’s been running the business and marketing end of the Lakers for years now, and in that time has gained a widespread reputation around the league for her business and media smarts. She’s one of the bright spots in a league dogged by recession.

She’s even managed to take the standoffish and sometimes arrogant Jackson and transform him into an endearing figure, all accomplished with the use of short snippets of offbeat video on the team’s webpage.

As for Jackson himself, well, let’s see. He’s fought off the ravages of bad hips and vascular troubles with his legs, not to mention the incapacitation of his longtime mentor, Tex Winter, with a stroke – Jackson battled through all those things to guide the Lakers to the 2009 NBA title.

So, in his one meeting with the media each season, Buss uses the occasion not to talk toast their accomplishments but to announce that he’s turning the keys to the machine over to Jim Buss?

Jerry Buss didn’t say a whole lot that day about daughter Jeanie and Phil, and his silence on their accomplishments speaks volumes.

Jeanie’s friends have been furious over the situation for some time now. They like to point out that Jim Buss didn’t even have an office in the team compound, that his big move has been to put his personal bartender on the team payroll.

As one Jeanie confidant explains, Jerry Buss is a misogynist who refuses to accept the idea that his daughter might ascend to run the franchise that he has owned for 30 years.

Buss made up his mind long ago that he was going to turn the franchise over to Jim. As Jerry West once explained of the team owner, “Once Jerry Buss makes up his mind, he normally doesn’t change it.”

Still, Jim Buss has been credited with making a series of moves five years ago that cost the franchise dearly, namely pushing for the firing of Jackson and the hiring of Rudy Tomjanovich as coach.

Jeanie’s allies insist that Jim Buss made that move without so much as consulting with anyone else, and Tomjanovich’s short tenure cost the team millions.

It’s no wonder that Jeanie and Phil are uneasy about trying to keep things headed in the right direction with Jim Buss in power.

Yes, Jim Buss was one of the voices in Lakers’ management that pushed for the drafting of center Andrew Bynum, but Jim has also played a role in the alienation of Bynum from Jackson and the team.

Although Bynum is signed to a long-term contract, his relationship with Jackson and the team remains a touchy issue.

Even though the Lakers sit atop the Western Conference and have nice momentum on their run to defend their championship, Jackson’s words fell, if not like bombshells, at least like mortar rounds in New York.

He told reporters that whether the Lakers repeat as NBA champions will be a big factor – but not the only one – in determining whether he returns.

“They have a great chance to be a very good team for a while, and Drew (Bynum) is locked in, and that’s a great start from the standpoint of putting a great roster together that has some commonality, that has played together, it’ll give them a real good basis,” Jackson said of the Lakers. “They have a couple other things that they have to get done and then I’m going to feel good about it.”

The Los Angeles Times reported the Lakers and Pau Gasol (who earns $16.5 million this season and $17.8 million next season) have agreed in principle to a three-year extension that will carry Gasol through the 2013-14 season. The Times also suggested that Kobe Bryant, who has the right to opt out of his contract at the conclusion of this season and become an unrestricted free agent, could also soon be in the fold long-term.

The news about Bryant and Gasol would seem to be great news for Jackson, the NBA’s highest-paid coach with $12 million annual salary and its biggest winner with 10 championships under his belt.

But Jackson said he will not decide on his future until June or July.

Repeating as champions would improve his prospects of staying, Jackson said.

“Oh sure, it really does. But it’s not a definite that I would continue even if we would be. If things didn’t go well and we didn’t win, that would obviously be something that would be, you know, you think maybe it’s time for someone else to look at this job and carry this team forward from there.

“That’s possibly not going to happen that way, but just winning it outright doesn’t mean it’s a natural to come back and coach this team. I just don’t see that as a natural thing. A lot of it has to do with the direction the league is going, the direction the ownership wants to go in. People are cutting costs all around the league, and coaches are obviously going to take a cut too, so they may not even want to hire me. They may want to save some money.”

When reporters asked Jackson if he would take a pay cut, he ended the session by saying, “Why would you?”

Longtime Jackson observers recognize the agenda he is setting. Indeed, we have all been here before, including:

• In 1998, when Jackson was coach of the Chicago Bulls, he engaged in a similar campaign with Bulls GM Jerry Krause, even as Jackson was driving the club to its sixth NBA title.

• In 2000, he conducted a smaller, more focused effort in dislodging then Lakers executive Jerry West from the franchise.

• In 2004, Jackson failed in a similar effort to get rid of star Kobe Bryant and was in fact fired by Jim and Jerry Buss.

Jackson, of course, was rehired by the team in 2005, and this time around he appears to have a much stronger relationship with Bryant.

Will Jackson be successful in reducing the role of Jim Buss and securing power for Jeanie and himself?

Lakers fans better hope the Buss family is smart enough not to escalate an internal power struggle for the team. That could quickly become a zero sum game.

As Krause, West and a long line of basketball experts have discovered, Jackson is central to the success of his teams, regardless of what conventional thinking suggests.

If Jim and Jerry Buss want my advice – and I’m pretty sure they don’t – they can save themselves a lot of grief and messy embarrassment if they’ll just sit back and chill, and let Phil and Jeanie take over.

Otherwise, it looks like Phil’s about to unleash another storm on the basketball world. Jerry and Jim Buss don’t want that. If they don’t believe me, they can just ask Jerry Krause.

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