Pau gasol jerry buss biography

Jerry Buss won an NBA title in his first year as an owner and in his 31st. In between his teams won eight other championships, appeared in 14 other Finals and only missed the playoffs twice. The numbers themselves form the best resume of any owner in sports history. But Jerry Buss’s Lakers were never simply about the results. They had movie stars watching basketball stars, dramas and controversies, feuds and tragedies. And most importantly they had a style that defined the franchise. Showtime didn’t simply describe a Magic Johnson-led fastbreak — it captured what the Lakers were all about.

Showtime ended on the court when Magic retired, even if the title-winning ways eventually continued. Now, with Buss’s death following a lengthy battle with cancer, the era that started in 1979 truly is over. No one knows what comes next, off the court or on. The on-court success is anything but guaranteed and for the first time in 34 years there are doubts about the judgment and instincts of the man in the owner’s box. It’s worth remembering what Buss accomplished — not just because of the unparalleled accomplishments, but because the level of success might never be seen again, in LA or anywhere else.

Buss needed a few great people around him and a lot of luck. Who could have guessed that no-name Pat Riley would go from assistant to all-time coach, just a few years after starring as the mute partner to Chick Hearn on Lakers broadcasts? Who could have guessed a high school guard taken 13th in the draft would go on to become one of the 10 best players in NBA history?

He didn’t always make the right decisions and he wasn’t infallible, as anyone who remembers the Randy Pfund era will attest. He went with Kurt Rambis in 1999 and Rudy Tomjanovich in 2004 and neither move worked. But when they didn’t, he twice quickly gave in and brought in the greatest coach of them all, Phil Jackson, to fix the mess. Titles followed bot

LOS ANGELES -- The man smiling in all the pictures, the one in blue jeans and a casual shirt with a beautiful young woman on his arm, looks as though luck has smiled on him once or twice in his day.

And truth be told, Dr. Jerry Buss, who turned a $1,000 real estate investment into the keys to the Los Angeles Lakers, and went on to become one of the most influential and successful owners in professional sports, did get one very important break when Magic Johnson fell into the Lakers' arms the very same year he bought the team. But to chalk up his remarkable life to the whims of fate and fortune is profoundly shortsighted. It wasn't luck that brought Buss from a Great Depression food line in a frigid corner of Wyoming to the sun-kissed boulevards of Los Angeles and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

It was vision.

Buss, who has died of cancer Monday at the age of 80, first came to Los Angeles as a 9-year-old boy. He stayed just three years before being yanked back to a hardscrabble life of shining shoes at the old Kemmerer Hotel and working at a Union Pacific railroad station after his mother remarried a man from Wyoming. And yet somehow in that brief, youthful glimpse, he saw the sorts of beautiful things in Los Angeles that Randy Newman would sing about some 40 years later in his civic -- and now Lakers -- anthem, "I Love L.A."

Look at those mountains, look at those trees. … Look at those women, ain't nothing like 'em nowhere.

That was the brand. The vision Buss would build his team into. The Lakers didn't just win 10 of their 16 NBA titles under Buss' ownership, they won with swagger and an effortless cool the locals here like to think they have, too.

"My dream really was to have the Lakers and Los Angeles identified as one and the same," Buss said in a 2010 interview

Jeanie Buss, the first female owner to become NBA champion, has been the majority shareholder of the Los Angeles Lakers since 2013, following the legacy of her father Jerry Buss, the man who changed the face of the franchise in the late 1970s.

He did so with a new concept, using sport as a spectacle, known on the court as Showtime. Jeanie has been with the franchise since the 1980s and, in an interview with MARCA, she discussed the decision to retire the jersey of Pau Gasol, a hero for the Lakers on and off the court.

Why did the Lakers decide to retire Pau's jersey?

"Retiring Pau Gasol's jersey was an easy decision to make. When a player is inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame as Pau will be, it is a Lakers tradition to retire his number and hang his jersey from the wall. We always knew that Pau would join past Lakers legends and enter the Hall of Fame, so it was never a question of 'if' we would retire his jersey, but 'when' it would be retired."

How would you explain this concept to fans less familiar with it?

"The best way for fans to understand what a jersey retirement means is to think that the Lakers have made the declaration that no other player will ever wear No.16 again. That is to say that no one will be able to 'fill the shoes', as we say in the United States, of an icon like Pau Gasol because of what he meant to our team."

What was so special about Pau on the court?

"Pau has tremendous talent and size, but it's his knowledge of the game and his ability to play like a graceful dancer that made him so spectacular."

What do you remember about your relationship with him when Pau played for the Lakers?

"When Pau was a member of the Lakers, it was like we had the best big man in the league, as well as a human being who always took time out of his schedule to connect with the community and bring wins to Los Angeles on and off the court