On Sunday night, the Los Angeles Lakers won their 17th NBA championship. With the title, Lakers owner Jeanie Buss made history. Becoming the first female controlling owner to lead an NBA organization to a championship.
Jeanie Buss
Jeanie Buss started her career with the Lakers in 1995 when she was the Alternate Govenorner on the NBA Board of Governors. When 1999 came around, Buss was promoted to Executive Vice President of Business Operations for the Lakers. Her brother Jim Buss was promoted to Vice President of Player Personnel in 2005. It was part of Lakers’ former owner, Dr. Jerry Buss’s plan to have his kids run the team. Jeannie would take care of the business side, and Jim would handle the basketball.
In 2017 after a ton of lousy basketball moves by Jeanie’s brother Jim and GM Mitch Kupchak, Jeanie began to step in. She fired Kupchak, and her brother put in his resignation. Buss went on to hire Magic Johnson as President of Basketball Operations and hired Rob Pelinka as the GM.
Johnson lured LeBron James to the Lakers, but Johnson did step down in April 2019. After Johnson stepped down, all the media and people all over were trashing the Lakers organization about their leadership and the coaching hire of Frank Vogel.
“I never lost faith in the people that I was working with, so that part was easy,” she said. “What was difficult was not to defend myself, or to defend the people that I care about like Rob and like Linda Rambis.”
But the Lakers keep they had down and kept working and did not let the outside noise affect what they were doing. Los Angeles made a massive trade to land Anthony Davis and the rest was history. Jeanie Buss taken over the Lakers franchise was the best thing to happen for the Lakers. Now they are back at the top of the NBA where they belong.
