Lakernoise

It seems these are the days to fathom big numbers in pro basketball, with the NBA’s big guns, first the Celtics and then the Lakers, winning titles in recent years.

Beyond Lakers coach Phil Jackson’s success, there’s another set of numbers to ponder in L.A. — the stunning points that 75-year-old Lakers owner Jerry Buss has put on the board with his serial dating of 18-year-old girls… No, just kidding, and jumping ahead of the story there. Well, sort of.

This season marks the 30^th anniversary of the self-made Buss acquiring the Lakers and the Great Western Forum from Jack Kent Cooke in a deal so stunning that Sports Illustrated hired accountants to investigate how Buss arranged the financing. After scratching their heads for weeks, the accountants conceded defeat. They never did figure out his fancy tricks.

Buss immediately recognized that he better listen to then-Lakers GM Bill Sharman, who advised that Cooke’s organization draft an unorthodox guard named Magic Johnson.

Magic propelled the Lakers to the league championship in the first season of ownership by Buss, who promptly told the television audience that he had worked so long and hard to win the championship. It sounded ludicrous, but Buss was talking about his years amassing the wealth and know-how to acquire the team.

He always said he bought the club just because he couldn’t get the tickets he wanted. Buss immediately understood that he should listen to Sharman, a Hall of Famer as both a player and a coach.

To this day, the low-key Sharman’s influence within the Lakers remains a key factor, despite the fact that he’s well into his 80s. Each season he writes a report on the team and its personnel that is to be read only by Buss.

“Sharman has always had considerable influence,” team consultant Tex Winter confided last year.

That may help explain the numbers that Buss has put up in three decades of ownership. His Lakers teams have won nine titles and appeared in the league championship series another six occasions, In his 30 years of ownership his teams have played for the big cheese 15 times, numbers not even close to being matched in the modern NBA, or any other modern pro sport.

Buss once said his negotiations to buy the Lakers allowed him admire the immense toughness of Cooke, the irascible owner in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Beyond his financial genius, Buss himself has made stunning displays of a similar toughness over the years, most notably in 1996 when he and then-GM Jerry West were putting together mammoth deals to acquire Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant.

Buss has long ceased to have even an office in the Lakers’ complex. West confided that his own influence and his relationship with the owner began to wane once Buss no longer came into the team offices on a regular basis.

As for the hard bark on Buss, team fans were reminded of that toughness again this past off-season as Buss dealt harshly with players’ agents in the wake of the team’s championship.

Already miffed at agent David Lee over dealings related to center Andrew Bynum, Buss promptly rebuffed Lee’s tactics to negotiate a new deal for promising young forward Trevor Ariza and signed Ron Artest instead.

Then, Buss pulled an offer to Lakers forward Lamar Odom off the table when Odom’s agent pondered it a few days too long. After much consternation by Lakers fans, Odom and the team finally reached a deal but not before everyone was reminded that Buss, known for his gambler’s mind-set, plays no games with money.

You could argue that his financial brilliance has built the foundation for the Lakers’ success. It certainly stands in stark contrast to the financial management of another of the league’s flagship franchise, the New York Knicks.

As Jerry West explained, Buss’s moving the team into the deal at the Staples Center “has been a license to print money.”

That has certainly helped the organization mint its championship rings.

As for those teen-aged girls, Buss has long dated hundreds of them, usually only once or twice each, and then collected their photos in albums. He has not been above boasting about his conquests to some media and associates, which has led California newspaper columnist Scot Ostler to offer that the owner is clearly a case of “arrested development.”

Buss and his elderly friends gather in his owner’s box at Lakers games with their young dates, a sight that’s increasingly hard for Jeanie Buss, the owner’s daughter and Phil Jackson’s girlfriend, to stomach.

One Lakers insider contends that only in Los Angeles could a team owner get away with such antics and basically get a free pass by the media.

Jeanie Buss is known for her competence in running the team, yet the power balance between her and rival brother Jim Buss remains murky.

At least one key insider contends that Jackson’s presence and success are the factors that hold the team together these days. If his tenure ends, the ensuing chaos might well bring an end to the remarkable run.

Then again, Buss has made a career of beating the odds. Now doesn’t seem the time to bet against him.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, the Life and Legend of a Basketball Icon, to be released in February by Random House/ESPN.