Lakernoise

Jeanie Buss comes clean now? It strains credulity.

I reported more than two months ago that there was some conflict within the Los Angeles Lakers, that Phil Jackson (Jeanie’s boyfriend) might not come back to coach the team next year because her father (Lakers owner Jerry Buss) might not want him back.

Jackson himself confirmed as much during the season by offering obtuse comments to reporters about the Lakers asking him to take a cut from his $12 million annual salary, the highest in the league or any other league for that matter.

I had reported that Jeanie Buss had privately expressed concern about the idea that her father and her brother Jim Buss, who runs the basketball side of the family business, might fire Jackson as they had in 2004. “I just know they’re gonna do it,” Jeanie told friends back in February.

When I reported the inside conflict, she went public in refuting me, saying that there were no problems, that things were fine.

So now, as the Lakers prepare for Game 6 of their first round series with Oklahoma City, why would she bring up the topic and tell the L.A. media that Jackson will probably coach somewhere next season? Why raise that distraction for the team?

The simple answer is that she’s nervous, explained one of the insiders in this murky world of Buss palace games. “She respects and fears her father,” said one particularly good source inside the Buss menagerie. “She’s a fragile person in that way.”

Jackson saw the issue with his pay/tenure coming early in the season. That’s why he spoke up about it in front of the New York media at the time.

He indicated then that the Busses wanted him to take a pay cut, and months later he confirmed that notion by musing about it again for reporters.

Earlier in the season, he had defiantly indicated he would take no pay cut. Why would you, he asked reporters rhetorically.

Then, later in the season, he seemed to give in a bit, by acknowledging in another press session that Jerry Buss was laying out a lot of money for the team, that the owner’s situation was tight.

Jackson, meanwhile, isn’t giving the issue a thought at the moment.

He’s locked in, as he always is this time of year, on one thing — the business of coaching in the playoffs. He brooks few distractions in the midst of the kind of challenge the young Thunder team has thrown his way.

Yet, if you think about it — and nobody thinks things through like Jerry Buss — Buss has presented Jackson with the ultimate challenge. The owner has implied a pay cut is in the offing (rumored to be a drop to $8-9 million, which in itself is a strange way of rewarding a coach for taking your team to the championship).

But Buss has set it up so that Jackson is literally coaching for his check. If the Lakers win, it seems highly unlikely that Buss would cut his pay, let alone dismiss Jackson.

In other words, Buss has the coach hustling for a $4 million bonus that won’t cost Buss a cent. Best of all, the $4 mil is coming from money that Jackson is already earning.

Pretty good stuff, Jer.

Meanwhile, the essence of Jeanie’s statement has been true since I first reported it in February. Jackson feels good physically and wants to coach next year. So if he doesn’t coach the Lakers, Jackson’s inclined to coach somewhere else, which sets up all sorts of intrigue around the league.

One of the big incentives is that the following year, 2011-12, figures to be a lock-out year of labor troubles in the NBA, and Buss knows that Jackson wants to win another title before the league shuts down in a dispute over money.

Of course, that door swings both ways. It means that Buss isn’t real eager to start over with a new coaching change only to have to shut the operation down with labor troubles. No, it’s in Buss’s interest to keep Jackson. The owner knows it. Jackson knows it. They are the two brightest bulbs in the entire NBA, facing off against each other in a bluff-fest.

Question is, is Buss just playing a little poker for the chips Jackson has sitting on the table? Or is Buss really ready to be free of Big Chief Triangle, as they used to derisively call Jackson, and his control offense?

We won’t really know until the season plays out. So sweet Jeanie should be in a real tizzy by the time that happens.

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