In a heated report from ESPN.com, Jeanie Buss, president and part-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, made it clear that the Lakers will return to prominence or her brother is out.
Her quotes below:
"Yeah, absolutely,” Buss said. “This is my job. I’m part-owner of the team, but I’m also the president. The Buss family is the majority owner but we have other partners as well who are also shareholders, and I have an obligation to them. Would I make those changes? Yes. My brother understands that we have to continue to strive for greatness and I think he would be the first one to feel that he would need to step down if he can’t get us to that point.”
“Well, I asked my brother, how long until we’re back into contention? And when I say ‘contention,’ that means past the second round, so either the Western Conference Finals or the NBA Finals,” she said. “And he told me that it would take three years to rebuild it. So we’ve just finished Year 1 of that three-year [plan]. So we have two more years until he feels that we’ll be back into going past the second round in the playoffs.”
How would she evaluate how her brother has fared in his role thus far?
“I think that it’s been clear that for the Lakers to miss the playoffs two seasons in a row, that’s never happened before,” she said. “We are coming off our worst season in the history of the franchise, which is tough to swallow, because my dad [former Lakers owner Jerry Buss] set the bar so high. But my brother had asked that he be given time to put together the kind of roster. And I agree that he needs the time so that he can show people what he envisions as Laker basketball going forward."
Sounds more like a threat than friendly family chat wouldn’t you say?
By Glenn Erby
