The curtain draws on Showtime

Jerry Buss, who owned Lakers for incredible 34-year stretch, dies at 80

Jerry Buss built a glittering life at the intersection of sports and Hollywood.

After growing up in poverty in Wyoming, he earned success in academia, aerospace and real estate before discovering his favorite vocation when he bought the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979. While Buss wrote the checks and fostered partnerships with two generations of basketball greats, the Lakers won 10 NBA titles and became a glamorous worldwide brand.

With a scientist's analytical skills, a playboy's flair, a businessman's money-making savvy and a diehard hoops fan's heart, Buss fashioned the Lakers into a remarkable sports entity. They became a nightly happening, often defined by just one word coined by Buss: Showtime.

"His impact is felt worldwide," said Kobe Bryant, who has spent nearly half his life working for Buss.

Buss, who shepherded his NBA team from the Showtime dynasty of the 1980s to the Bryant era while becoming one of the most important and successful owners in pro sports, died on Monday. He was 80.

"Think about the impact that he's had on the game and the decisions he's made, and the brand of basketball he brought here with Showtime and the impact that had on the sport as a whole," Bryant said a few days ago. "Those vibrations were felt to a kid all the way in Italy who was six years old, before basketball was even global."

Under Buss' leadership, the Lakers became Southern California's most beloved sports team and a worldwide extension of Los Angeles glamor. Buss acquired, nurtured and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball minds during his Hall of Fame tenure, from Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to Bryant, Shaquille O'Neal and Dwight Howard.

Few owners in sports history can approach Buss' accomplishments with the Lakers, who made the NBA finals 16 times during his nearly 34 years in charge, winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. Whatever the Lakers did under Buss' watch, they did it big - with marquee players, eye-popping style and a relentless pursuit of success.

Buss died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant and friend. Buss was hospitalized most of the past 18 months while undergoing cancer treatment, but the immediate cause of death was kidney failure, Steiner said.

"When someone as celebrated and charismatic as Jerry Buss dies, we are reminded of two things," said Abdul-Jabbar, the leading scorer in NBA history. "First, just how much one person with vision and strength of will can accomplish. Second, how fragile each of us is, regardless of how powerful we were. Those two things combine to inspire us to reach for the stars, but also to remain with our feet firmly on the ground among our loved ones ... The man may be gone, but he has made us all better people for knowing him."

With his condition worsening in recent months, several prominent former Lakers visited to say goodbye. Buss' list of basketball friends is long and stellar, with Johnson calling him a role model and nearly all former Lakers considering him a friend.

"He was a visionary, he was a trailblazer," Johnson said during an interview on SportsCenter on Monday. "He did things that were, at that time, people thought weren't cool, weren't proper. He was a man who walked the walk and talked the talk. He produced championships because he was the most competitive owner you could ever meet in your life."

Buss always referred to the Lakers as his extended family and his players rewarded his fan-like excitement with devotion, friendship and two hands full of championship rings. Working with front-office executives Jerry West, Bill Sharman and Mitch Kupchak, Buss spent lavishly to win his titles despite lacking a huge personal fortune, often running the NBA's highest payroll while also paying high-profile coaches Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

With 1,786 victories, the Lakers easily are the NBA's most successful team since he bought the club, which is now run largely by Jim Buss and Jeanie Buss, two of his six children.

"It was our father's often-stated desire and expectation that the Lakers remain in the Buss family," the family said in a statement issued by the Lakers. "The Lakers have been our lives as well, and we will honor his wish and do everything in our power to continue his unparalleled legacy."

Johnson and fellow Hall of Famers Abdul-Jabbar and Worthy formed lifelong bonds with Buss during the Lakers' run to five titles in nine years in the 1980s, when the Lakers earned a reputation as basketball's most exciting team with their flamboyant Showtime repartee.

The buzz extended throughout the Forum, where Buss used the Laker Girls, a brass band and promotions to keep fans interested in all four quarters of their games. Courtside seats, priced at $15 when he bought the Lakers, became the hottest tickets in Hollywood - and they still are, with fixture Jack Nicholson and many other celebrities attending every home game.

"Anybody associated with the NBA since 1980 benefited greatly from Jerry Buss' impact on the game," Steiner said. "He had a different way of looking at things than I did, and people who had been raised in basketball."

Worthy tweeted that Buss was "not only the greatest sports owner, but a true friend & just a really cool guy. Loved him dearly".

After a rough stretch of the 1990s for the Lakers, Jackson led O'Neal and Bryant to a three-peat from 2000-02, rekindling the Lakers' mystique, before Bryant and Pau Gasol won two more titles under Jackson in 2009 and 2010. The Lakers have struggled mightily during their current season despite adding Howard and Steve Nash, and could miss the playoffs for just the third time since Buss bought the franchise.

"Today is a very sad day for all the Lakers and basketball," Gasol tweeted.

(China Daily 02/20/2013 page23)