A Hollywood Ending, page 6
The Lakers agreed to add two years and $48.5 million onto Kobe’s contract. Despite his previous comments, Kobe did leave about $16 million on the table, but he remained the league’s highest-paid player. The deal would keep him with the Lakers through the end of the 2015–16 season, which would be his twentieth and presumably his last. Jeanie had gotten what she wanted. But with it, the Lakers’ hopes of landing two stars in the summer of 2014 had vanished. And not just because a chunk of their cap space was now gone. Dwight Howard’s decision to bolt had sent a message across the league.
“I’ve had a lot of clients in the last five years, good players, who didn’t want to play with Kobe,” one agent later told ESPN The Magazine. “They see that his teammates become the chronic public whipping boys.”
Kobe did battle back from his Achilles injury and, incredibly, returned to the court in December 2013, but after playing just six games, he suffered a fracture of the lateral tibial plateau in his left knee, ending his season. The Lakers limped to a franchise-worst 55 losses, leading to Mike D’Antoni’s resignation. Still beholden to Kobe, they replaced D’Antoni with Byron Scott, a former Laker who despised analytics, believed modern players were soft, and, most importantly, had Kobe’s approval. The results were disastrous. The team finished 21–61, missing the playoffs for a second straight year—something that hadn’t happened since 1976. They were so bad the NBA flexed them out of multiple national TV slots. The main culprit was Kobe, who launched 20 shots per game despite shooting just 37 percent, making it one of the least efficient seasons in NBA history. But for Lakers fans and franchise insiders, it was easier to pin the blame on Dr. Buss’s heir.
“Jim’s trying to do it himself and trying to prove to everybody that this was the right decision that [his] dad gave [him] the reins,” Magic said on ESPN’s flagship daytime show, First Take. “He’s not consulting anybody that can help him achieve his goals and dreams to win an NBA championship.”
The worse Jim did, the more popular Jeanie became, despite being the one who had green-lit the Kobe contract. She was like the backup quarterback a city clamors for when the team’s starter struggles, a role she seemed to relish. Unlike Jim, who rarely made public appearances, Jeanie walked around the arena before home games, chatting up employees and fans. She started doing tons of press, too. Whenever she was asked about the team’s struggles, she’d say that the on-court product was Jim’s domain. The tension between the two became so palpable that everyone in the organization was forced to pick a side.
“I never talked to Jeanie,” Scott recalled. “It just felt like it’d be a betrayal of Mitch and Jim.”
The lack of unity wasn’t just bad for organizational morale; it was also holding the team back. This was on full display in the summer of 2015. Once again, management was trying to rebuild through free agency. The Lakers had missed out on LeBron, Anthony, and Wade, but now they had a meeting scheduled with LaMarcus Aldridge, a twenty-nine-year-old power forward and three-time All-Star. Aldridge was the best free agent on the market, and, unlike some of the recent star players the team had pursued, he actually wanted to be a Laker.
This is theirs to lose, he told his agent before the meeting.
The window for teams to talk to free agents opened on June 30 at 9 p.m. West Coast time. Not long after that, a large group of Lakers executives and employees marched into the LA offices of Wasserman Media Group, the agency representing Aldridge. Everyone settled in around a conference room table, while the team’s Twitter account posted a picture of Maroon 5 front man Adam Levine wearing a customized Lakers jersey with Aldridge’s name and number (12) on it, accompanied with the caption: “It’s 9:01pm PT and Mitch Kupchak is walking in to meet with @aldridge_12 #LAtoLA.” Aldridge’s name began trending on Twitter.
The Lakers had spent weeks preparing, even enlisting the team’s graphic design group to help build a pitch deck—a first for them. But they had misread their target, a fate they perhaps could have avoided had the basketball and business sides been capable of working together. There were NBA players who would have been excited to be getting social media shine. Aldridge, a laid-back Dallas native, wasn’t one of them. “I don’t give a shit about trending on Twitter,” he’d say years later. He was more interested in hearing how Kobe envisioned the two of them fitting together on the court and how Jim and Kupchak planned on fixing the team. And yet the Lakers decided to have Tim Harris, someone with no connection to basketball operations, deliver the meat of the pitch.
A former UCLA soccer goalie whose influence had grown since Dr. Buss’s death, Harris had met Jeanie while playing for the Lazers. The two dated for a few years and stayed close afterward. When Harris retired from professional soccer in the late ’80s, he got a job in the Forum’s marketing department, and his combination of intelligence, charisma, and ambition propelled him up the ranks. Harris was also a true believer in Lakers mystique. It was why, under his leadership, the Lakers were one of the last teams to create a department solely devoted to marketing. “He used to always say that our marketing is that we’re the Lakers,” said one former Lakers employee.[*1]
In the Aldridge meeting, Harris’s job was to lay out the benefits of the LA market. And he did. He talked about all the sponsorship and branding opportunities that would arise should Aldridge sign with the Lakers. Typical Lakers stuff. Only he kept going.
And going.
And going.
And going.
“You could see people around the room rolling their eyes,” one attendee said.
The Lakers businesspeople weren’t done. After Harris came a PR executive, who explained what it was like to play in a big market. A community relations director described the sort of work the team’s foundation did and how Aldridge could fit in. Executives from Time Warner Cable, which televised Lakers games, and AEG, which owned a minority stake in the team, spoke, too.
“It was a miscalculation of me as a person,” Aldridge later said.
That afternoon, reports trickled out saying that Aldridge would not be signing with the Lakers. One reason given was because of their botched pitch. ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne then reported that the Lakers, who thought the meeting had gone great, were stunned. Later that week, Aldridge met with the San Antonio Spurs. The team’s esteemed head coach, Gregg Popovich, showed up in jeans and a T-shirt. Spurs players wore sweats. The meeting took place on some couches. The conversation was free-flowing and centered on basketball. Aldridge signed with them soon after.
“The vibe of understanding who I was as a person,” he said years later, “[it] was just, they get it.”
* * *
• • •
This was the night everyone in LA had been waiting for. It was April 13, 2016, and Kobe’s final game had finally arrived.
The season to that point had been a disaster. Kobe’s November announcement that it would be his last had turned the team into something closer to a circus act, with his farewell tour taking center stage. Scott gave Kobe free rein, whether that meant firing off-balance, contested jumpers, or skipping practices altogether. “We were always waiting for him on the bus on the road because he was, like, drinking wine with the refs or opposing coaches,” D’Angelo Russell, a 2015 Lakers draft pick, said. “He just really wasn’t around the team that much. He kind of just showed up for the game, and we ran with it.”
The season’s laissez-faire atmosphere extended to the team’s fans as well. Once, during a timeout, rookie Larry Nance Jr. felt a hand on his shoulder and assumed it belonged to a teammate. Then he turned around. “We break the huddle,” Nance said, “and it’s like, ‘How the fuck did Samuel L. Jackson get in here?’ He was in there a solid twenty-five seconds, just chilling, watching the play.”
Yet on this night, Staples Center was buzzing. Nearly five hundred media credentials were issued. Celebrities—Jay-Z, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Shaq, David Beckham, and, of course, Jack Nicholson—filled the courtside seats. Kobe came out shooting, over and over and over and over. He missed more than he made, but no one seemed to care. With just over two and a half minutes left in the game, the Utah Jazz, the Lakers’ opponents, led by 10. Kobe then hit a couple of free throws, trimming the lead to eight and giving him 49 points. Next time down, he floated the ball high off the glass for points 50 and 51. The crowd rose to its feet and applauded.
The lead was down to six.
The Lakers got another stop. Kobe, with the crowd chanting his name, split a double team and buried another stop-and-pop jumper from the right elbow.
Fifty-three points.
Four-point game.
Another stop. Another Kobe jumper, this time from behind the three-point arc.
“Got ’em all!” ESPN play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico shouted, over the cackling of his broadcast partner, Hubie Brown, an eighty-two-year-old basketball lifer.
Fifty-six points.
One-point game.
The building erupted as if it were Game 7 of the finals. ESPN’s camera panned from Beckham to Kanye to Nicholson, all grinning and laughing like children.
The Jazz called timeout. Sitting alone on the bench, Kobe gasped for air.
The Jazz missed a shot coming out of the break. The Lakers got the ball into Kobe’s hands. Everyone in the building stood up. Lakers forward Julius Randle sprinted and set a series of screens for Kobe. Kobe got to his spot on the right wing and rose up.
Fifty-eight points.
The Lakers led by one.
Two more free throws gave him 60.
With 4.1 seconds left, the Lakers took a five-point lead. The Jazz called timeout. A mix of ecstasy and shock swept through the building. Russell and Randle leapt into Kobe’s arms. The electric opening chords of Guns N’ Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle” blared out of the arena’s speakers. More teammates surrounded Kobe. He swung by the sidelines to embrace Shaq, who was smiling in disbelief. The Lakers subbed Kobe out of the game for the last time.
The night had been something out of a Rocky movie. Kobe finished with 60 points. He’d taken 50 shots, the most in a game since 1967. He’d scored 15 of the Lakers’ final 17 points and outscored the Jazz by himself in the fourth quarter, 23–21. And he’d done all this in a win, just the Lakers’ 17th of the season.
After the game, Kobe addressed the crowd from halfcourt. He thanked his teammates. He thanked the fans. He thanked his wife, Vanessa, and their two daughters, Gianna and Natalia, all of whom were sitting courtside.
“What can I say?” he asked.
He paused.
“Mamba out.”
He blew a kiss and put the mic down.
For one night, the Lakers had been reminded of everything they once were, of the greatness that had once graced their floor, of the way they’d once made people feel. For one night, they were once again the center of the sports world and all their problems had ceased to exist.
By the following morning, that was no longer the case.
For the Buss kids, there was no more hiding behind Kobe. They were on their own.
* * *
• • •
After being spurned by Jim Buss, Phil Jackson decided he wasn’t ready to retire. He did some informal consulting for the Detroit Pistons and worked with an ownership group interested in bringing an NBA team back to Seattle. Then, in the winter of 2014, the New York Knicks came calling. They believed Jackson, who won two titles with the team as a player (in 1970 and 1973), could bring some of his magic to the Big Apple, and they were so desperate that they were willing to give him everything the Lakers wouldn’t: control over personnel, a lighter schedule, and a five-year, $60 million contract. It was an offer too good to pass up, even if it meant that he and Jeanie, who had finally gotten engaged the previous Christmas after fifteen years together, would now have three thousand miles between them.
In March 2014, the Knicks introduced Jackson as their new president of basketball operations. Jeanie, who had grown up idolizing a man who prioritized his business over his family, remained in LA. She “was far too proud of her career [to move],” ESPN’s Shelburne, a reporter known to be plugged into Jeanie’s camp, would later write, “and she always saw the Lakers as a civic treasure for which she was responsible.”
Just sixteen months after believing that they were on the verge of working in the same building once again, Jeanie and Jackson were now, in part because of Jim, living on opposite sides of the country. The relationship wasn’t strong enough to withstand the distance. In December 2016, Jeanie and Jackson announced that they had ended their engagement.
“The love of my life is the Los Angeles Lakers,” Jeanie later wrote on Twitter. “I love Phil & will always. It’s not fair to him or the Lakers to not have my undivided attention.”
* * *
• • •
The one silver lining to all the losing was that it had allowed the Lakers to stock up on high draft picks. Julius Randle, whom they had drafted seventh overall in 2014, was coming off a season in which he averaged 11.3 points and 10.2 rebounds. D’Angelo Russell, drafted second overall in 2015, had struggled as a rookie but was still considered an intriguing prospect. And they had landed the No. 2 pick again in 2016, which they used on Brandon Ingram, a long-limbed, versatile scorer out of Duke.
The Lakers seemed to have the makings of an intriguing young core. What they needed next was a coach who could lead them forward. And they had their eyes on one candidate.
Luke Walton had grown up around the game. His father, Bill, was a basketball legend, first at UCLA, then in the NBA, and later in the broadcast booth. An avid Deadhead, Bill viewed basketball as much a spiritual exercise as a physical one.
Luke was the third of Bill’s four boys. His childhood was, well, different. His parents separated when he was young, allowing Bill to turn his sprawling San Diego home into an upscale commune for the Dead and anyone embracing that lifestyle. The band often threw after-parties on his tennis court. Sometimes Luke would come down in the morning and be greeted by a naked Jerry Garcia. “People would walk in and go, ‘Hey, what’s up?’ ” Luke recalled. “And then [I’d] look at one of my brothers and [say], ‘Who was that?’ and they’d go, ‘I don’t fucking know.’ ”
Luke inherited his father’s gregarious, fun-loving vibe. He also inherited Bill’s basketball IQ and, by his senior year of high school, had shot up to 6-foot-8. He accepted a scholarship to the University of Arizona, where he spent four years starring on the basketball team but also relishing his time on campus. He’d drive around in a restored 1970 yellow Cadillac convertible, wearing cutoffs and tank tops. He had a deep voice and bushy light brown hair. The girls loved him. So did the professors and the team’s fans. Luke knew how to have a good time, especially with Richard Jefferson, his teammate and roommate.
“If there was a recruit that Coach [Lute Olson] really wanted, he would put Richard and I on the job,” Luke said.
In 2003, the Lakers drafted Walton with the second pick of the second round. He embraced his role as a reserve and spent nine-plus seasons in LA. He won two championships and became a fan favorite. He also found a mentor. “I think Phil [Jackson] saw a lot of himself in Luke, honestly,” Kobe said once. When a back injury sidelined Walton for the majority of the 2009–10 season, Jackson invited him into the coaches’ meetings and had him chart statistics from the bench. After he retired in 2013, Walton joined the coaching staff of the Los Angeles D-Fenders, the Lakers’ D-League affiliate.
The players there loved him. “Being at that level is sort of this weird purgatory where you’re trying to figure out your life and career and not making a lot of money,” Brandon Costner, who played for the D-Fenders that season, said. “But you came in every day and saw Luke smiling and in a great mood, and it just lightened things in the locker room.” Walton would blast Lynyrd Skynyrd and the Grateful Dead in the gym. He’d answer questions about the NBA and his experiences there. He’d run stations at practice, challenging players to beat him with their go-to moves.
“Guys would miss three, four, five times,” Costner said. “And he’d go, ‘Well, fuck. That doesn’t seem like a go-to move.’ ”
The next year, Steve Kerr, a fellow Arizona alum who played for Jackson in Chicago, became the head coach of the Golden State Warriors. He hired Walton as an assistant. Walton connected well with the players and impressed the higher-ups with his ability to suggest adjustments on the fly. The Warriors won the 2015 title, but, during training camp the next season, a back issue forced Kerr to take an indefinite leave of absence. The Warriors named Walton interim head coach. When Kerr returned in January, the team was 39–4. Sure, Walton had inherited a roster that was coming off a championship and still running Kerr’s system, but the record all but ensured that he’d soon be receiving a chance to coach his own team.
Less than two weeks after Kobe’s final game, the Lakers fired Scott. They called Walton soon after. Jim and Kupchak laid out their plans. They’d try to be opportunistic with free agents, they told Walton, but knew their recent draft picks were their future. Walton asked if they were willing to be patient and let the young players grow. They said they were. Walton told them he wanted to build a system and culture that could be sustained for a long time. That, they said, was exactly what they were looking for.
