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Buss died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant.
He was 80.
He had been in
hospital for treatment of unknown form of cancer but the immediate cause
of death was kidney failure, Steiner said.
Under Buss’s leadership since 1979, the Lakers became Southern California’s most beloved sports franchise
and a worldwide extension of Hollywood glamour. Buss acquired, nurtured
and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball
minds during his Hall of Fame tenure.
Few owners in sports
history can even approach Buss’s accomplishments with the Lakers, who
made the NBA Finals 16 times through 2011 during his 32 years in charge,
winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. The Lakers easily are the
NBA’s winningest franchise since he bought the club.
Few owners have ever
been more beloved by their players than Buss, who always referred to the
Lakers as his extended family. Working with front-office executives
Jerry West 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.
Always an innovative
businessman, Buss paid for the Lakers through both their wild success
and his own groundbreaking moves to raise revenue. He co-founded a
basic-cable sports television network and sold the naming rights to the
Forum at times when both now-standard strategies were unusual, adding
justification for his induction into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.
Magic Johnson and
fellow Hall of Famers Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James 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 glamorous Showtime style.
Jackson then led
Shaquille 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.
Although Buss was
proudest of his two hands full of NBA title rings, he also was a
scholar, Renaissance man and bon vivant who epitomized California cool —
and a certain Los Angeles lifestyle — for his entire public life.
The father of six
rarely appeared in public without at least one attractive, much younger
woman on his arm at USC football games, boxing matches, poker
tournaments — and, of course, Lakers games from his private box at
Staples Center, which was built under his watch.
Buss earned a Ph.D. in
chemistry at age 24 and had careers in aerospace and real estate
development before getting into sports. With money largely from his
Santa Monica real-estate ventures, Buss bought the then-struggling
Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and both clubs’ arena — the Forum —
from Canadian Jack Kent Cooke in a $67.5-million (U.S.) deal that was
the largest sports transaction in history at the time.
In January 2011, Forbes estimated the Lakers were worth $643 million — the second-most valuable NBA franchise.
Buss also helped
change televised sports by co-founding the Prime Ticket network in 1985,
even receiving a star on Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 for his work in
television. Breaking the contemporary model of subscription services
for televised sports, Buss’s Prime Ticket put beloved broadcaster Chick
Hearn and the Lakers’ home games on basic cable.
Buss also sold the
naming rights to the Forum in 1988 to Great Western Savings & Loan —
another deal that was ahead of its time.
Born in Salt Lake
City, Gerald Hatten Buss was raised in Wyoming and attended USC for
graduate school, eventually becoming a chemistry professor and working
as a chemist for the Bureau of Mines before his life took an abrupt turn
into wealth and sports.
The former
mathematician claimed his fortune grew out of a $1,000 real-estate
investment in a West Los Angeles apartment building with partner Frank
Mariani, an aerospace engineer.
Buss purchased Cooke’s
entire Los Angeles sports empire in 1979, including a 5,261-hectare
ranch in Kern County. Buss’s love of basketball was the motivation for
his purchase, and he immediately worked to transform the Lakers — who
had won just one NBA title since moving west from Minneapolis in 1960 —
into a star-powered endeavour befitting Hollywood.
“One of the first
things I tried to do when I bought the team was to make it an
identification for this city, like Motown in Detroit,” he told the Los
Angeles Times in 2008. “I try to keep that identification alive. I’m a
real Angeleno. I want us to be part of the community.”
Buss’s plans
immediately worked: Johnson, Abdul-Jabbar and coach Paul Westhead led
the Lakers to the 1980 title. Johnson’s ball-handling wizardry and
Abdul-Jabbar’s smooth inside game made for an attractive style of play
evoking Hollywood flair and West Coast cool.
Riley, the former
broadcaster who fit the L.A. image perfectly with his slick-backed hair
and chiseled good looks, was surprisingly promoted by Buss early in the
1981-82 season after West declined to co-coach the team. Riley became
one of the best coaches in NBA history, leading the Lakers to four
straight NBA finals and four titles, with Worthy, Michael Cooper, Byron
Scott and A.C. Green playing major roles.
Overall, the Lakers
made the final nine times in Buss’s first 12 seasons while rekindling
the NBA’s best rivalry with the Boston Celtics, and Buss basked in the
worldwide celebrity he received from his team’s achievements. His
womanizing and partying became Hollywood legend, with even his players
struggling to keep up with Buss’s lifestyle.
Johnson’s HIV
diagnosis and retirement in 1991 staggered Buss and the Lakers, the
owner recalled in 2011. The Lakers struggled through much of the 1990s,
going through seven coaches and making just one conference final
appearance in an eight-year stretch despite the 1996 arrivals of O’Neal,
who signed with Los Angeles as a free agent, and Bryant, the
17-year-old high schooler acquired in a draft-week trade.
Shaq and Kobe didn’t
reach their potential until Buss persuaded Jackson, the Chicago Bulls’
six-time NBA champion coach, to take over the Lakers in 1999. Los
Angeles immediately won the next three NBA titles in brand-new Staples
Center, AEG’s state-of-the-art downtown arena built with the Lakers as
the primary tenant.
After the Lakers
traded O’Neal in 2004, they hovered in mediocrity again until acquiring
Gasol in a heist of a trade with Memphis in early 2008. Los Angeles made
the next three NBA finals, winning two more titles.
Through the Lakers’
frequent successes and occasional struggles, Buss never stopped living
his Hollywood dream. He was an avid poker player, frequently
participating in high-stakes tournaments, and a fixture on the Los
Angeles club scene well into his 70s, when a late-night drunk-driving
arrest in 2007 — with a 23-year-old woman in the passenger seat of his
Mercedes-Benz — prompted him to cut down on his partying.
Buss owned the NHL’s
Kings from 1979-87, and the WNBA’s Los Angeles Sparks also won two
league titles under Buss’s ownership. He also owned Los Angeles
franchises in World Team Tennis and the Major Indoor Soccer League.
Buss’s children moved
into leadership roles with the Lakers in their father’s later years. Jim
Buss, the Lakers’ executive vice-president of player personnel and the
second of Buss’s six children, has taken over much of the club’s primary
decision-making responsibilities in the last few years, while daughter
Jeanie is a longtime executive on the franchise’s business side — and
Jackson’s longtime companion.
Yet Jerry Buss served
two terms as president of the NBA’s board of governors, and was actively
involved in the 2011 lockout negotiations, developing blood clots in
his legs attributed to his extensive travel during that time.
