Posted by Roland at October 30th, 2007

The one thing to come out of the Kobe Bryant turmoil this fall? Coach Phil Jackson’s power within the Los Angeles Lakers organization is increasing.
The team is in the process of sweetening its new contract offer to Jackson, who is in the last year of a three-year, $30 million deal.
Saying he would wait to determine if he wanted to keep coaching the team, Jackson had held off on accepting a new deal. But in recent days the coach has begun sounding like he will stick around.
The team is preparing to up the ante by as much as $1 million or more per season.
It makes sense too.
Lakers owner Jerry Buss has long known that he needs at least one superstar on the roster to sell his high-priced tickets to Hollywood’s high rollers.
With Shaquille O’Neal long gone, and Bryant himself kicking to be traded, that leaves only Jackson with enough star quality to sell tickets.
One thing is sure, Lakers fans do love the Zen Master.
This is not to imply that Jackson is seeking to shore up his own importance by driving away Bryant. Far from it, the coach has done virtually everything possible this fall to keep Bryant in the fold.
Bryant has maintained privately that he has no trust left in Jerry Buss. That trust, in Bryant’s mind, hung by a thread through the off-season. Then Jerry Buss chose during an October training camp interview to make public his private conversations with Bryant. That left absolutely no trust, an infuriated Bryant revealed to those around him.
Jackson and other coaches talked repeatedly to Bryant, telling him the team would not trade him because there was no way the Lakers could receive comparable value in return.
The Lakers had already dealt away one superstar in a terrible deal. They couldn’t do that twice, at least not and recover.
Bryant, though, has steadfastly held on to the belief that somehow a deal will be worked out with either Dallas or Chicago.
The Lakers acknowledge that they have continued to talk trade possibilities, but working out a deal is very difficult.
Some analysts, such as TNT’s Charles Barkley, have projected that Jackson’s recent criticism that Bryant doesn’t have his heart in the season will serve to sever the relationship between the player and the coach. But that’s not true.
Bryant and Jackson understand each other. Where once they had virtually no relationship in Jackson’s first tenure with the team, they now know each other well.
The situation, however, has once again meant that Bryant has taken a horrific beating in the press for his actions this fall, sitting out three days of training camp and playing poorly in exhibition games.
The recent incidents have caused many of the team’s fans to forget that Bryant has given an exemplary effort to the team for more than a decade.
Fans will perhaps soon enough realize that Bryant’s anger and disgust is similar to that of longtime team executive Jerry West, who understood the true, unrevealed nature of Jerry Buss.
Buss in recent years has turned over the full responsibility of running the team’s basketball operations to his son, Jim Buss.
Dating back to when West ran the team, the Lakers basketball staff has long considered Jim Buss a loose cannon within team operations.
In the years since he has had full power, Jim Buss has made some wild moves, including the hiring of Rudy Tomjanovich in 2004, a unilateral decision that cost the team millions of dollars.
The L.A. Times’ Mark Heisler recently took me to task for reporting that it was Jim Buss, not Jerry Buss, who hired Tomjanovich. But Jerry Buss has been busy in recent years covering Jim’s mistakes and taking public responsibility for them. Surely Heisler realizes that.
There are those around the team who maintain that Jim Buss is behind the 2004 firing of Jackson and the disastrous trading of O’Neal. Certainly Jackson believes Jim Buss was behind his firing.
Through the process, however, it has become perfectly clear to those in the team’s employ that Jim Buss is going nowhere. His father is determined that his son will remain in charge of the team’s basketball operations.
That’s a big part of why Bryant wants out. It’s one of the reasons that West left.
Jerry Buss’ insistence that his son run the team confirms his utter lack of understanding that used to drive West crazy. Think about it. Even those extremely close to the Buss family acknowledge that Jerry Buss has been unbelievably lucky during his tenure with the team.
He bought the Lakers in 1979 after they already had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and had already drafted Magic Johnson. They won five championships in the ‘80s when West stopped Jerry Buss from angrily trading James Worthy.
They won three championships from 2000-03 after West labored mightily in the ‘90s to get O’Neal and Bryant.
Jerry Buss never won anything that Jerry West didn’t giftwrap for him.
The current joke around the team is that Jim Buss has put his friend/former bartender on the scouting payroll.
Of course it was Jerry Buss who hired a former NFL cheerleader as a scout.
Like father, like son.
Jerry Buss isn’t totally whack, though.
He turned the business operations of the team over to his daughter Jeanie Buss, Jackson’s girlfriend for the past seven years.
Jeanie has long shown her competence as a sports executive. One of her recent moves is to chase away the team’s ancient penchant for secrecy. The team’s website now offers revealing interviews with Jackson. And watchdog PR man John Black has been reined in, pulled from Jim Buss’ supervision over to Jeanie Buss’ business side.
The two sides of the organization have even agreed to regular meetings, so that one side of the organization can keep track of the other (translation: the loose cannon can be tied a bit).
Jeanie Buss is even contemplating a reality TV show that reveals many aspects of her unusual life.
Perhaps the new openness will reveal to fans what the once super dedicated Bryant has come to realize—Jerry Buss has virtually ensured that this franchise’s glory days are all behind it.
Then again, perhaps it would be a failing to count out that Buss luck.
Maybe there’s another fairytale left in the pot. You know, they manage to hold onto Bryant. Lamar Odom gets healthy and stays that way, as do all the other casualties from last season. Chris Mihm, Kwame Brown, etc.
And Phil Jackson works a bit of coaching magic for another title.
All those who believe that raise your hands. We’ll get you a ride to games on the California Dreamin’ Buss lines.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In The Words Of Those Who Lived It. He also serves as senior editor for Lindy’s Pro Basketball Annual.