khandor’s sports blog

What can the good folks who run Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment Ltd. [MLSE] possibly have to learn from an individual owner like Jerry Buss?

Buss has put up some numbers by Roland Lazenby [January 17, 2010]

This season marks the 30^th anniversary of the self-made Buss acquiring the Lakers and the Great Western Forum from Jack Kent Cooke in a deal so stunning that Sports Illustrated hired accountants to investigate how Buss arranged the financing. After scratching their heads for weeks, the accountants conceded defeat. They never did figure out his fancy tricks.

Buss immediately recognized that he better listen to then-Lakers GM Bill Sharman, who advised that Cooke’s organization draft an unorthodox guard named Magic Johnson.

Magic propelled the Lakers to the league championship in the first season of ownership by Buss, who promptly told the television audience that he had worked so long and hard to win the championship. It sounded ludicrous, but Buss was talking about his years amassing the wealth and know-how to acquire the team.

He always said he bought the club just because he couldn’t get the tickets he wanted. Buss immediately understood that he should listen to Sharman, a Hall of Famer as both a player and a coach.

To this day, the low-key Sharman’s influence within the Lakers remains a key factor, despite the fact that he’s well into his 80s. Each season he writes a report on the team and its personnel that is to be read only by Buss.

“Sharman has always had considerable influence,” team consultant Tex Winter confided last year.

That may help explain the numbers that Buss has put up in three decades of ownership. His Lakers teams have won nine titles and appeared in the league championship series another six occasions, In his 30 years of ownership his teams have played for the big cheese 15 times, numbers not even close to being matched in the modern NBA, or any other modern pro sport.

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Lesson #1.

Find a highly respected former player and coach, who is a member of the Basketball Hall Of Fame, and retain his services as a ”special consultant”, answerable to no one else but you.

Lesson #2.

Listen closely to what this special consultant actually has to say about the game, itself, and the people who happen to play, and coach, and GM, it.

Lesson #3.

Prioritize ‘championship success’ above all else.

Lesson #4.

Do exactly what your “special consultant” tells you to do.

Lesson #5.

Stay the heck out of the way …

by occupying yourself with whatever sort of distraction might be necessary to keep your fingerprints off the day-to-day operations of the team, even if this means embarassing yourself by spending ‘quality time’ with a bevy of bouncing beauties less-than 1/4 of your own chronological age …

except, of course, when the REALLY BIG decisions MUST get made, usually involving OBSCENE amounts of $$$, in which case you become a “tough as nails” ruthless barracuda who …

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Lakers’ Buss knows when to hold’em [March 2, 2008]

has done whatever it takes to bring this city [Los Angeles] a championship.

“What’s kept me going is my competitiveness,” he says. “I really, really do want to win.”

We forget this because, as he walks through the Staples Center tunnel with a colorful shirt and a laughing date and a pleasant handshake for everyone, he seems like just another L.A. dude.

We forget that he had the smarts to help engineer the NBA’s deal of the season by getting rid of Kwame Brown . . . because, well, you see that seemingly empty house across the narrow street from his house?

“Kwame Brown lives here,” Buss says, shrugging. “Seriously. We used to hang out. We’re friends.”

When is the last time an owner admitted that his team makes him cry?

Jerry Buss says that when the Lakers are playing well and Staples Center is rocking and the city is embracing his baby, he is moved beyond words.

“It’s a tearful experience sometimes,” he says.

His team can also make him so mad, he will storm out of his box in silence.

“I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, I’m just so angry now, I can’t talk,’ ” he says.

Jerry Buss doesn’t own the Lakers, he lives them, from filling the front office with his family to filling some of his players with unabashed love. Maybe this is one of his secrets? The team isn’t run by him, it is him?

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Presto!

PS. The Los Angeles Lakers [32-9] pay their only visit to The Big Smoke this season on Sunday, January 24 [i.e. later on this week]. Raptors fans should mark the date down on their calendars as, unfortunately, Showtime, doesn’t happen in these parts with the degree of frequency that befits a world-class city like Toronto. 

Truth Is Usually A Dangerous Concept, But For Tex Winter It Was Natural
Tex wore the truth as a natural, everyday part of his attire. Like an old pair of basketball shoes. And he delivered the truth dead on, at eye level.

He didn’t use the truth to adorn himself, to make himself look better. He simply provided feedback. He told people what he thought.

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Like countless others in this world, yours truly, who just happens to dwell in this little corner of the blogosphere, owes an indefinable debt of gratitude to Tex Winter.

Best wishes to you, Sir. 

Hubris: The most common form of tragic flaw, usually ascribed to excessive pride or arrogance.

Insightful observations, the last 24 hrs …  

Roland Lazenby, on SportsHubLA, Twin Towers For The Lakers? Head Scratching For The Suns?,  

I’m surprised (Steve) Kerr would do that,” (Tex) Winter said of the Suns’ trading Shawn Marion this week for Shaq. “It’s a strange trade. Shaq sure misses a lot of games. He’s not a very good defensive rebounder, or offensive rebounder for that matter. He does rebound his own misses a lot.” 

Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports, Suns hoping O’Neal has something left in tank 

Kerr insists the Suns doctors – considered the benchmark staff in the sport – are sold that they have a rehab remedy for Shaq’s troublesome hip to work him back into shape. “He’s going to make dramatic improvement with us,” the two doctors told Kerr, and that carries credibility with the Suns basketball people. Before the Suns signed Nash, Hill and Antonio McDyess with serious past injuries, the medical staff assured them that they could keep these players healthy.

and

Henry Abbott, TrueHoop, The Way Shaquille O’Neal Plays Now 

Better than looking at numbers is watching video. I just did a ton of this, thanks to Synergy Sports. I watched him against the kinds of Western powers that the Lakers are likely to face. And I watched him against other teams.

Here are some things I can tell you with assurance:

* He’s not as slow or fat as rumored. He looks pretty fit, frankly. And on the ground, he moves well. Sometimes he even beats the opposing center down the floor. When pressed, he can still win deep post position against just about anyone. Once he catches it there, his footwork has long been splendid. Without looking rushed, he can probe the defender’s attack and make the right maneuver — spin, jump hook, power dribble, whatever — time and again. He is doing an excellent job of getting himself good, clean, short-range looks, and then …

* … he’s blowing layups. Layup after layup after layup after layup. It’s horrible to watch. He’s a first-rate talent. He’s getting the shot every coach dreams about: point blank, with no real defensive distractions. And then he just misses it. Five years ago, he dunked all of those. Now, thanks to his physical limitations, he’s not going over anybody with anything. So he has to finesse it, and watching him finesse a layup is a lot like watching him finesse a free throw. Hard to watch. 

* I had watched about 20 clips of him before it really struck me how true it is that the man can not jump anymore. Rebounding, scoring, blocking shots … everything he does now is within a few inches of the ground. It doesn’t make him any slower, weaker, or smaller, but it does significantly up the chances that the opposition stops him from doing what he wants to do. (For instance, James Jones blocked his shot earlier this year. That didn’t happen five years ago.) So stark is this limitation that I won’t be at all surprised if we learn later that some essential element of a good jump — some muscle, some ligament, some something — is incapacitated or missing entirely from O’Neal this season. And that really hurts his potential as a stopper, basket protector, and rebounder in Phoenix. If the Suns doctors and trainers can re-install whatever’s missing, he’ll be dunking again, which will change everything.

* There has been the suggestion that he might help the Suns stop big men like Andrew Bynum and Tim Duncan. Maybe that’s part of the plan. But I can tell you that he has not yet seen the new Bynum, and when Miami played San Antonio early this season, O’Neal was strictly on Fabricio Oberto and Francisco Elson duty. Three times, late in the game, he ended up on Duncan in a switch or as a helper, and here’s what happened: Duncan put the ball on the floor and made a layup, Duncan kicked out to Manu Ginobili for a made three, and Duncan dribbled the ball out of bounds — my money’s on it going off O’Neal, but it was called Miami ball. So, without a dubious call, you have exactly zero success with O’Neal as a Duncan stopper.

When an elite level athlete loses his/her legs … he/she cannot play ‘the game’ any more. 

Shaquille O’Neal’s legs are gone. 

In fact, they’ve been gone since the 2005-2006 season, when his ORPG dipped below 3.4 for the first time in his career. 

When the Heat captured the NBA Championship that year, storming back against the Dallas Mavericks in the Finals, from an 0-2 deficit, they did so without Shaq on the floor for extended stretches of the game and, most importantly, not at all in the closing minutes of the last 4 games. 

The 2005-2006 NBA Championship belonged to Dwyane Wade & Co. … not to The Diesel & His Friends.  

Q1. Are the Suns a better team today than they were two days ago?
A1. Yes, they are. 

Q2. Are the Suns more of a threat to actually win the 2007-2008 NBA Championship, right now, than they were two ago?
A2. Yes, they are. 

Q3. Are the Suns good enough, as is, to win this year’s NBA Finals?
A3. No, they are not. 

Q4. How come? 
A4. Because Shaq simply doesn’t move well enough (with agility & power) any more to: 

1)      Defend his own check effectively, especially away from the basket;
2)      Block shots effectively;
3)      Defensive Rebound effectively;
4)      Rotate properly on Defense; and,
5)      Offensive Rebound his teammates’ Misses effectively.

And, it’s only Hubris for him and members of Suns’ Athletic Training Staff to believe, unequivocally, that their State-of-the-Art rehabilitation techniques will be able to restore this behemoth of a man to sound working order, after 15 years of NBA pounding, once this type of physical decay has set in. 

Restoring the health of relative youngsters … like Amare Stoudemire and Antonio McDyess, after serious knee injuries … and maintaining ‘horizontal’ athletes … like Steve Nash & Grant Hill, respectively, despite serious back & assorted other ailments … is not the same thing as returning ‘the Hops’ to a 312 lbs Giant, who hasn’t been able to jump properly for 2 years, due to a series of debilitating knee, thigh and hip injuries, which required several surgeries & extensive rehabilitation/treatment during the last 24 months, including a series of cortisone shots.   

Proverbs 16: 18