Lakers controlling owne🐼r Jeanie Buss doesn’t appear over the Zen ♏Master just yet.
In , Buss got emotional when discussi﷽ng Knicks president Phil Jackson. They announced the breakup of their engagement last December, ending a 17-year relationship and ending speculation Jackson eventually would return to the Lakers in some capacity.
Buss, 55, had been embroiled this past season in an ugly legal tussle with her brothers over ownership control of the Lakers. When she was asked who had helped her most during the trying ordeal, “she fought back tears,” the newspaper reported, and her voice “trembled.”
The answer, Buss said, would have been Jackson had they no꧑t parted ways.
“There’s no crying in basketball!” Buss told the newspaper. “It’s been hard ꧂for [Jackson] there. Now, it’s like, he would have been the pillar that I could count on.”
Discussing his Buss breakup at length f🌄or the first time, Jackson was quoted in the piece, saying: “You know the league has never been very amenable, happy about our relationship. There’s this feeling that there could be collusion betwe𒅌en those two franchises. So that was something that was difficult for us. It’s not that reason [why it ended]. I think distance is the biggest reason.”
When Jackson broke his seventh-month silenඣce at a season-ending press conference in mid-April, he acknowledged his personal crisis was a contributing factor to his laying low.
The LA Times piece reiterated the notion Buss convinced a reluctant Jackson to take the Knicks presidency in March 2014. Lakers brass had passed over Jackson for their head job months before, hiring Mike D’Antoni agai🐲nst Jeanie’s wishes. Jackson had led the Lakers to five titles.
“I also knew as long as Phil was sitting in his house in Playa del Rey, any time the Lakers didn’t do well, fans would start chanting his name again,” Buss recounted, adding she “encouraged’’ him to take it. According to the LA Times, Jackson told Buss he didn’t want the Knicks job if it would jeopardize their relationship. It did just that — as it turned out.
Through Buss’ fight with her brothers over control of the Lakers, “Jackson sent Jeanie supportive text messages and u🌠rged her to stand her ground,” the newspaper reported.
“I’m happy Jeanie’🌳s kind of cleared the deck and she can run it on her own now,” Jackson said.
Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka are in place𒁏 as Lakers front-office leaders while Jackson has two years left on his five-year Knicks pact.