Lakernoise

I guess I’m flattered.

First Jeanie Buss and now Lakers owner Jerry Buss have come forward to address my observations about the organization’s inner conflicts, particularly the job status of coach Phil Jackson (Jeanie’s boyfriend who used to wear a soul patch).

At least Jeanie addressed me by name. Jerry chose longtime Lakers writer Steve Springer to put together a story answering a tough column I did on this blog about Jerry’s poker face. In Springer’s story for ESPN Los Angeles, he addressed me only as an “Internet report.”

Hey, guys, if you want this to go away, don’t look at me. You gotta get Phil to quit talking about it.

That’s your cold, hard truth here.

It’s obvious he doesn’t feel entirely appreciated. And, puh-leeze, spare me Phil’s breathless response to this that everything is just fine.

It was Jackson who first launched this issue when he chose the team’s trip to the New York market earlier in the season to air his complaints that  Jerry Buss and his boy Jim, who is trying to establish himself as the guy running the Lakers basketball operations, were trying to get Jackson to take a pay cut.

“So they may not even want to hire me,” Jackson said at the time. “They may want to save some money.”

This started with Phil’s indignation over the money, folks. By the way, that’s what really got Phil rolling against Bulls GM Krause back in Chicago. Krause was pinching Phil’s money.

Most recently, I tried to soft shoe Jackson’s remarks about Jerry Buss by calling them “tender.”

But what the heck, let’s be frank about what Jackson did. He used one of his old tricks. Back in his battles with the Chicago Bulls front office, when Jackson wanted to tweak Jerry Krause, he would say something positive about him and then act like he was defending him against critics. In that manner, Jackson could introduce a negative idea to the media and still not get blamed for “seeding” it.

Very crafty.

For example, there are the frequent complaints by fans that Buss — who was not with the team for last year’s championship and was not there to accept the NBA trophy as the owner traditionally does — is detached from the team.

“I think he admires this team, I think he likes his athletes,” Jackson told reporters last week. “He has an ability to stay removed and yet attached to them.”

What does that mean? I think Jerry’s interested in this team?

I think?

C’mon. Let’s face it. Jackson’s trying to coach the team to a championship and he basically says the owner isn’t all that interested.

There’s the fact that Jerry Buss dislikes the triangle offense, which I have pointed out in my columns, because of his great love for his “Showtime” teams that ran with the basketball.

Here’s what Jackson had to say on the subject:

“I think Jerry was very close to his teams in the ’80s, the Showtime teams,” Jackson said of Buss. “And I think he learned something from that. He learned that you can be friends with these guys, but time passes, a generation passes. There’s some heartache involved in that. There’s some pain involved in it the closer you get to the guys.”

So Jackson’s pointing out that Jerry’s teams with Magic Johnson broke his heart. And because his heart is broken he can’t seem to muster any public interest in the current Lakers?

Is that it?

But it is good that Buss at least spoke up. He didn’t say anything much about Jackson’s contract status except what I had already pointed out in my columns: He said the organization will wait until the season is over to renegotiate with Jackson.

Buss pointed out that Jackson waited until the end of the 2008 season before signing with the club for three years on his last contract.

“If I were to go to him right now and said, ‘Phil, will you coach next year?’ He would say let’s wait until the end of the year and see how I feel,” Buss told Springer (not ESPN who bought the freelance piece). “So, I don’t think it causes any tension, I just have to wait until then before a discussion begins.”

No where in any of Springer’s report does it mention that Buss fired Jackson at the end of another contract talk, in 2004. You think that’s an important detail? (On the other hand, I should point out the piece is a hell of a fine interview with the owner, who provides all kinds of insight into his life and family and team issues.)

“I think from the Lakers’ perspective we really want to get through the year, then take a deep breath and see where we are,” Buss said.

Too bad Jackson and Buss didn’t appear together in a press conference, where they could take open questions and assure fans that there’s no problem. But that’s not going to happen, not in LA, where Buss has craftily used his public relations staff over the years to discipline the media.

I don’t want to belabor the point any further. Get on with the season. Just don’t try to blame it on me.

Phil’s the one doing the talking.

Roland Lazenby is the author of Jerry West, The Life And Legend Of A Basketball Icon, an L.A. Times bestseller recently released by ESPN Books.