Don’t hold your breath.

Although Buss could have lauded Jackson any time over the past two years as the Lakers won back-to-back NBA titles, the owner’s silence on the matter has been deafening.

I’ve been pointing this out for months, by the way. And Mark Heisler of the L.A. Times, who just this week has offered a ringing endorsement of Byron Scott as a Jackson replacement, has repeatedly taken me to task for it.

But the truth that insiders have been telling me for months is clear.

If Jackson’s going to return as coach, he’s going to have to do it to despite the stony silence of the owner. And he’ll likely have to take a pay cut despite his success.

If Buss doesn’t want to pay Jackson the unheard of price of $12 million per season to coach the team, then he should never have agreed to such a deal when he gave Jackson a pay raise two years ago. You wanted and needed a championship so badly back then that you agreed to boost his money, Dr. Buss?

And now you don’t need a title very badly? That’s what you’re saying with this silence.

To complain about money now that Jackson has delivered two championship teams is unheard of. Win titles and take a pay cut? That’s a low blow, Dr. Jerry. And it’s not just me saying that. It’s your remarkable team captain, Derek Fisher, who discussed the issue in an interview with Ramona Shelbourne.

“As much as it is about his quality of life and how he’s feeling, his energy levels,” Fisher said, “I think his decision could be easier if he wasn’t maybe feeling as though he’s not being fully appreciated, which is how it ultimately makes you feel.

“It’s sad to me,” Fisher told Shelbourne recently, “when you think about what he’s accomplished in his career, that he still always has to deal with these type of scenarios where there’s a question of whether or not he’s the best person for the job, or he’s not really coaching because of the players that he’s had. He’s just a remarkable human being in terms of his approach to managing and coaching the team.

“I think not even just the Lakers, but the NBA as a whole, would lose a big part of what this game has been about the last 20 years if he’s not back. If he’s not back, it changes the whole landscape.”

Fisher, of course, is a free agent guard and will turn 36 in August. Has there ever been a braver, more forthright NBA player? The guy not only laid his heart on the line for the franchise’s 17th title (yes, Lakers won one in 1948 in the old National League), but Fisher is speaking up right now, even though it could cost him dearly.

Teammates Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol have also spoken up, although their contracts are secure and in place. They’ve made it clear where they stand.

Some Lakers fans may let you off the hook for this one, Jerry. It’s obvious you’re gambling that your season ticket holders won’t protest if you let Jackson and Fisher slip away.

I’m not asking you to pay Jackson. I’m just calling for you to speak up and declare publicly how important he has been to the franchise.

I know that you don’t like that Phil’s an odd, distant kind of guy.

I know you don’t like the triangle offense he runs.

I know you don’t like paying him so much money.

I know you’re eager to prove that you can win one without Phil.

I know you’re not elated that he shacks up with your daughter and sometimes offers his disrespect in all those subtle little ways.

I know you like showing that it’s you, not Jackson, who is in control of the franchise.

I know you think your reputation and image are secure with all those championships you have in your pocket.

I know you’re a proud, stubborn man, but does this have to come down to ego and pride?

Yes, it’s a poker game. Lakers assistant Brian Shaw, one of two top candidates to replace Phil, is “close to accepting” the Cleveland Cavaliers job, according to his agent. What’s the last time an agent made such an announcement? And Byron Scott declared that he’s not waiting around on anyone, another obvious bluff. Are Phil, Scott and Shaw all trying to out-bluff Jerry Buss?

Does it all come down to yet more tiresome games?

Is that what you want as your legacy?

You have a chance to eclipse the Boston Celtics as the team with the most NBA titles, and you’re going to let ego and pride get in the way?

Say it ain’t so. Speak up and ask Phil to return. Show us you’re bigger than these silly games.

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

Take Game 2 of L.A.’s title bout with the Boston Celtics, for example. After the Lakers took it in the shorts, she started telling friends that she was worried her father, team owner Jerry Buss, already had a deal with assistant coach Brian Shaw to coach the Lakers next season.

“She was worried there was already a deal in place,” explains my impeccable source deep, deep, deep within the Lakers’ inner sanctum, wherever that cave is.

“Everybody is circling like vultures,” said the source, referring to hopefuls Shaw and former NBA coach Byron Scott.

It’s been that way all season, of course. What can you expect if your boyfriend — Lakers coach Phil Jackson — and your father — Southern California’s playboy owner Buss — are the ultimate control freaks?

The two of them have been engaging all year in a tit for tat about whether Jackson will return to coach the team next year.

Buss could have cleared up the situation at any time, but the owner really didn’t want to, as my source explained. “He wants us to remember who’s in control.”

Jackson’s former aides say the same thing about him: The guy is a bitch of a control freak, eager to jump your ass just to show he’s in charge. And while those tendencies were already large for Jackson during his days coaching in Chicago, his ego has ballooned to Thanksgiving Day Macy’s proportions with all the worship and money (better than $12 mil a year) he gets in California.

So all the poor Lakers fans and media have been caught up in a tug of war between these two giant narcissists.

The sign that it might be coming to an end came just this week. No, not at the Lakers evening their series with the Celtics at three games apiece, but in the fact that the Lakers have decided to again raise ticket prices.

A serious Depression has settled up the entertainment industry in L.A., so there’s no way Buss would raise prices with only Brian Shaw as his hole card. “I don’t know how Jerry Buss could raise ticket prices and get everybody (season ticket holders) back next year if he doesn’t have Phil as a coach,” offered the big source, who studies the Lakers’ parlor games and internal divisions up close.

Jackson will try to get the last little twist in their control game by taking as much as a month to announce he’s coming back for another shot. He’ll have a hard time, though, because Buss is determined to get him to take a pay cut, right after supposedly paying him yet an additional $2 million bonus if Jackson wins the title.

That remains a decent-sized IF heading into tonight’s Game 7.

Jackson hasn’t had much fun goosing Buss lately because the Zen Master has had his hands full coaching against these Celtics in the playoffs. “Phil has been resolutely focused on getting through this series,” says the deep insider.

The inner circle can’t think of a more out-of-whack series since 2000 when Rasheed Wallace led Portland in coughing up a huge lead against L.A. in Game 7 of the Western Finals. There’s substantial delight in Jackson’s group in contemplating the fact that Rasheed’s tank job in that game was the thing that jump-started his Lakers dynasty.

They all say, thank you, Sheed. And they won’t mind at all if you go ahead and play a role in assuring a Lakers’ win this Game 7 too.

As for Brian Shaw, everyone in and around the inner sanctum is used to his incessant self-promotion, so nobody sees this thing as horrific disloyalty to Phil, the insider explained. “Brian Shaw has been out for Brian Shaw ever since he joined the staff… He’s always looking to improve his position.”

Excuse me, but that describes just about all assistant coaches in the entire realm. The NBA pays its head coaches millions while its assistants get plumber’s wages. So who can blame BS?

Even without Jeanie’s Shaw assumption, there’s abundant drama in this Game 7, with both Jackson and Boston coach Doc Rivers potentially coaching their last games for their respective teams.

The even money says that Jackson returns in L.A., that Jerry Buss, long a skeptic about Jackson’s approach, has been made a believer this season, watching him make things work.

Perhaps, perhaps. But let’s not forget how crazy things have gotten this season every time the Lakers lose. And, hey, these are the Celtics. They lead the world in making the Lakers loony.

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

Yet when he does make a mistake, it’s often a real lulu, a stupendous boner.

For example, there was the time late in his tenure with the Chicago Bulls that ole PJ decided to send a special lady friend some of that fancy Victoria Secret style underwear. The only problem was, according to team employees who laughed themselves silly over the incident, he allegedly put the wrong address on the package. When the carrier couldn’t deliver the underwear and returned it to his office, Jackson’s secretary assumed it was something he had purchased for his wife and directed the package to her.

A hard rain fell after that one.

Those same Bulls employees swore that the wayward underwear had originally been sent to a lady in Arizona.

You’d think that would have been enough to teach Big Chief Triangle a lesson. Leave the state alone, son.

But Jackson likes to get into those tweak-the-opponent modes during the play-offs, so now we have the great immigration caper. Jackson apparently forgot his bad karma with the desert and committed one of the silliest mistakes of his venerable career when he opened his mouth about Arizona’s controversial new approach to enforcing  immigration laws.

Worst of all, Jackson decided to address the issue just as his Lakers were about to take on the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference finals. Strangest of all, Jackson, who has a progressive, liberal image dating back to his hippie days playing for the New York Knicks, seemed to support the hard-line approach of Arizona’s Republican governor, who has pushed the crackdown.

All of a sudden here’s PJ coming across like one of those angry tea-bagger militants, and like that he’s driven a wedge into a Lakers fan base that once worshiped the Zen Master. Instead, Jackson was greeted for Game 1 of the Western Conference finals by Lakers fans protesting his political posturing.

And that doesn’t even touch the miffed and hurt co-workers in the Lakers organization and on the roster (see Kobe Bryant’s wife) offended by his statements.

How bad is it?

Well, Jackson girlfriend Jeanie Buss and her sidekicks — I’ll call them the Jackson inner core — went to work soon after his blunder with a major damage control effort that included contacting all the media and spinning the situation as best they could. They employed that old Lakers PR flack John Black in getting the word out and phoned all their personal media connections.

Heck, they even contacted me, which suggests how desperate they are. They knew I’d probably do something like drag up the silly underwear episode, but, hey, they needed to control the damage with Jackson’s all-important base — Lakers fans.

Fortunately, Jeanie Buss is absolutely fantastic at damage control because all of the Los Angeles media are sweet on her, not to mention the fans themselves. Even I admit to falling under her lure.

“She’s some kind of gal,” Tex Winter once told me after he met Jeanie for the first time. If she can snare Tex’s affection, she can have mine any day.

So here I go helping the PJ cause with a bit of spin mixed in with my own observations.

One of the issues is that Jackson and Jeanie’s father, team owner Jerry Buss, have a stand-offish relationship that has left to question whether Jackson will return to coach the Lakers next year. His contract is up, and Jerry Buss doesn’t seem overly fond of Jackson, who has something of a history stirring up the shit with owners and organizations.

Jackson’s only true power against Jerry Buss is Jackson’s own popularity with Lakers fans. He and Jeanie used that popularity to help him get rehired in 2005 after Jerry Buss fired him in 2004.

So it’s not smart that Jackson offended his base with his stance on immigration. And it’s not smart that he would do so during the playoffs when the team is trying to build the tremendous championship focus that Jackson’s great teams have been known for.

Does all of this give Jerry Buss more leeway in cutting Jackson loose after the season? It sure seems like it could. If Jackson pisses off the fans, well, he’s in trouble.

However, that’s not entirely the case. To get a breakdown on the Jeanie spin and other inside dope, we’ll turn to my usual reliable source. He’s tight with Jeanie and Phil and always knows exactly what’s going on. They rely on him to get the inside word out, and he does. We’ll call him The Pernicious Phil Insider. Maybe this will make Mark Heisler of the L.A. Times happier. Heisler gets so frustrated that all the inside poop escapes him. Heisler runs around trying to throw water on all the Internet stories, which leaves him hardly any time at all for doing any real reporting. But I digress…

“I think he made a rookie mistake,” the Pernicious Phil Insider said of Jackson. “It’s a no-win situation all over the place. He misread the crowd and he misread the politics and he got outside of his game.”

Then the Insider started talking about Phil’s “nuanced” language being misunderstood.

Plus, the Insider said, Phil was just searching for something to tweak the Suns, because their organization had come out strong against the new immigration enforcement.

I told him I thought that was a silly defense for Phil. Why spin it?

Personally, I think that Phil should just come out and say, “Look, I’m a dope. I’m not really as smart as I try to act all the time. I did something really stupid by opening my mouth about this immigration thing. I have no idea what I’m talking about, so if it’s OK with everyone I’ll get back to what I do know, and that’s basketball.”

Yes, it would require Jackson humbling himself, which may be physically impossible with the size of his ego. But if he did that, people would forget all this in about three hours, less than a single news cycle.

Jackson, though, has been so goofy and coy in his news conferences that reporters seem intent on asking him lots about it and holding his feet to the fire.

As for the whole thing providing Jerry Buss with ample reason not to bring Phil back next year at his exorbitant salary of $12 million per season, the Insider did point out some things that make sense.

Jerry Buss has been reminded during these playoffs of just how good a coach Phil Jackson is. “With any other coach, they don’t survive that first round against Oklahoma City,” the Insider says.

After all, Phil uses Tex Winter’s triangle offense to get such a high degree of efficiency out of the team’s role players that he’s worth every penny of his big bucks.

Will Jerry Buss really want to gamble on another coach next season? That, of course, is the question.

Jackson himself seemed to be pouting a bit in the wake of the uproar over his comments and suggested to one radio interviewer that he just might retire after the season.

The Insider reminds us all that Jackson is cranky this time of year and it’ll take only a week back in Montana during the off-season before he’s bored and wants to coach again.

If that’s the case, Phil, do yourself a favor and leave immigration policy to people who understand the full range of human issues involved. While you’re at it, don’t send off any more fancy underwear either. And most important of all, look out for those Celtics. They got something nasty coming for ya.

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

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.

That was Tex Winter’s description of the coaching staff’s relationship with Bynum. Not mine. And that was almost two years ago, well before Winter suffered a debilitating stroke.

At the time, the Lakers were nursing their humiliation at the hands of the Boston Celtics in the 2008 championship series. Bynum’s approach was clearly a function of the disconnect between coach Phil Jackson and basketball operations chief Jim Buss.

As Winter explained at the time, Bynum was Jim Buss’s prize draft pick. Buss was apparently concerned about how Jackson was handling Bynum. In fact, Buss would advise Bynum to hire his own big man’s coach because Jackson wasn’t a good coach for big men.

Sister Jeanie Buss, well known as Phil’s girlfriend, questioned her brother’s take on the situation by pointing out Jackson’s large success with Shaquille O’Neal and lesser talented post players in Chicago.

Jeanie Buss had long confided to friends that her brother was the main impetus for the team’s firing Jackson in 2004. With trust between Jackson and Jim Buss already at a minimum, it’s not hard to figure that Jim Buss’s coaching advice for Bynum damaged the relationship further.

Then there was Bynum’s decision to involve his own doctors in his knee injury that season, rather than relying on what the team had to offer in terms of medical support. Frankly, it’s not all that unusual for pro athletes to seek medical advice outside the team. But the sum of the situation left Bynum oddly distanced from the coaching staff, Winter confided at the time.

Two years have passed, and Bynum’s situation with the team has perhaps improved. But the internal trust level in general is not great with the Lakers, so you have to wonder.

Recent games have shown that Bynum’s return to the lineup from his recent injury will be key for the Lakers prospects in this spring’s playoffs.

Even with the Lakers posting the top record in the Western Conference, the Twin Towers look of Bynum and c/f Pau Gasol has brought mixed reviews, but this much is clear: With the two big men, the Lakers have been able to overpower a lot of opponents. Though at times it has seemed that the best pairing is either one of the big men with sixth man Lamar Odom.

The truth is, questions such as these often never find definitive answers in the NBA. Some nights, Bynum and Gasol will play very well together. Other nights, the Twin Towers will have their issues.

As it stands now, those questions are small beside the questions about basic trust within the organization. There have been all sorts of strange signals and communications coming out of the organization this season.

And while Jeanie Buss has tried desperately to put a good public face on it, the situation seems fragile at best. Jerry Buss recently tried to pose that it was normal for Jackson to finish out the season without a contract for next year. But it’s not.

Consider the Denver Nuggets. They found themselves in a similar situation with coach George Karl and reached an agreement with him right before the All Star Weekend just so they could avoid just such late-season craziness as the Lakers are facing right now.

As Shaquille O’Neal told me a few years back, he felt no trust in dealing with Jerry Buss, had no relationship with the man. Now Buss is known for being quite loyal to those with whom he shares trust and warm feelings. But that’s not the case with these Lakers, no matter how many coats of paint you put on it.

Jackson himself has sought to emphasize in his recent public comments that the Lakers only have five or six players under contract for next season. The last time Jackson was fired, the team tried to make a transition to a running team. Are they preparing to do the same now? Has the decision already been made? That’s a fair and legitimate question.

Are the Busses quitting on these playoffs even before they happen? Another fair question.

And is Bynum’s return from injury a wild card in the hand that’s being dealt by the Busses? Another fair question.

And in all of this where stands Kobe Bryant, who can opt out of his Lakers contract after the season? A truly intriguing question.

If this Lakers season disintegrates into the foul gas of mistrust, the blame will lie squarely with Jerry and Jim Buss. Now, as an owner, Jerry Buss has been hugely successful, and he’s earned plenty of favor with Lakers fans. So it may just be that he and son Jim would be forgiven for ditching Jackson’s last team that runs the Triangle offense.

As a friend of Jeanie Buss’s said earlier in the season, Jim and Jerry Buss are gambling that fans won’t complain too loudly if they end the Phil Jackson era with the Lakers. Maybe not.

Of course, all this conjecture winds up lining the bottom of the bird cage, if Bynum returns from injury and the team gathers strength down the stretch.

In the meantime, all Lakers fans can do is wonder. And try not to get a whiff of the mistrust that blows in the winds of El Segundo.

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

The big guy is giving in. He’s not going to go tit for tat with team owner Jerry Buss over his coaching contract for next season and beyond.

Speaking to the media this week, Jackson acknowledged that he has a chance to come back next season. The only way of assuring that, he pointed out, is for the Los Angeles Lakers to win this year’s NBA title. And the odds of that are long, Jackson added.

“Odds wise, I serve at the behest of the Buss family,” Jackson said, then quipped that he serves Buss’ daughter Jeanie “all the time … ”

(Jackson can never resist a little dig at Jerry Buss, who has long disliked the fact that his coach dates his daughter, who also handles marketing duties for the team.)

Then Jackson added, “But (right now) I’m serving this basketball club as a coach. I think it’s the best way to approach it right now. Where this team is, the way it’s built, the way we’ve been going along this season, the direction the NBA is going right now.

“A lot of these things fit together,” he said. “If we win it’s almost imperative that (I) give it another shot, but that’s a lot of ‘if’s’ in there. Winning is a really big (challenge). There are four playoff (series) that you have to get through before you can say that ‘We won’ and then have a chance to do something special again, unique.

“So, that’s a long shot.”

Earlier in the season, Jackson had begun publicly nudging Jerry Buss about his contract for next season. The coach began the effort in front of the New York media with comments implying that the team was making an effort to get him to take a cut from his $12 million salary each season.

Jackson, of course, saw a scenario shaping up and wanted to change the direction that things were going. It was obvious he faced a scenario that forced him to win the NBA title this year to keep his job.

Jackson was really concerned about next year in that it provided him a window to win another championship. Jackson reasoned that if the Lakers didn’t win the title this year, then Jerry Buss and son Jim might decline to give him a new contract (they made a similar move in 2004 and fired him).

Jackson would prefer to have next season under contract, because it would still give him an opportunity to win one more title next year. Jackson believes the NBA is headed for contract troubles with its players union that could easily force a cancelation of the 2012 season due to an owner lock out.

Title opportunities this season and next are huge for the highly competitive Jackson, who has already won 10 titles.

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.

Lakers coach Phil Jackson confirmed as much recently when he opened up about Jerry Buss, the team’s 77-year-old owner.

“He’s a gambler,” Jackson told reporters before a recent game in Los Angeles. “He knows the odds, he knows when to take the risks. I think he carries that sense of this is a risk/reward type of game, and what are the rewards with the risk I’ve thrown out there in each situation.”

Jackson, of course, is echoing something he learned from another owner — Chicago Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf — who first taught him about risks and rewards years ago. Jackson also had his unpleasant moments with Reinsdorf yet was able to maintain a strong respect for him even through their nastiest showdown in 1998.

In his years on the bench in the NBA, Jackson has learned some difficult lessons about the mind-set of team owners. You could see those lessons reflected in his recent comments. Jackson has long been known for his masterful use of the media, for planting ideas with reporters and stirring the pot if it needs stirring. Jackson himself calls this “seeding” ideas with the media.

But as he’s aged Jackson has also learned to employ a more direct approach. You might argue that with his recent comments, Jackson was reaching out to Buss, telling him through the media that he understands the pressures the owner faces. (Thanks to the great Kurt Helin at http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/2010/03/phil-jackson-says-jerry-buss-knows-when-to-hold-them.php )

“This year he took the big risk and brought Lamar (Odom) back, so we could get back to where we are the championship, that we could have a shot at that championship again,” Jackson said of Buss signing Odom in the off-season. “But that was a big pill to chew for an organization that has never lost money in the however many years he has owned the team, 30 years (31, actually). I know that was something he had to convince himself of. I had to convince him of, and stay after it that it was imperative for us to stay with this crew, this group of guys.

“I think Jerry was very close to his teams in the ’80s, the Showtime teams,” Jackson continued. “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.

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

These are somewhat difficult circumstances. Buss pays Jackson the exorbitant sum of $12 million a year to coach the Lakers. Jackson, in turn, has rewarded Buss by leading the team to last year’s NBA title, his fourth championship in nine seasons with the team. Yet Jackson’s contract is up after this season, and Buss has not offered him a new one.

In place of an offer, Jackson and his girlfriend — the owner’s daughter, Jeanie Buss — are left reading the master poker face of Jerry Buss. What is he thinking? What cards is he holding? What will he do?

These are serious questions, because Buss has already fired Jackson once in their time together in 2004. So it’s understandable that this poker face would privately unnerve Jeanie Buss and to some degree Jackson (and the team itself). After all, he is trying to coach his team to another championship.

Jerry Buss has been a tremendous owner in Los Angeles in terms of his success over the past three decades. But it’s not right. Jackson shouldn’t have to play this poker game and try to win a championship too.

Yes, Jerry Buss is a sly, tough owner who plays a sly, tough hand of poker. But passionate Lakers fans know this isn’t the time or place for a hand of poker. The Lakers have an opportunity to do something special here if they can win a title in 2010.

Then again, Jackson has won in tough circumstances before. That’s why he reached out to Buss with those almost tender comments.

Buss has indicated in the past that he doesn’t love the triangle offense that Jackson runs. Truth be known, he prefers the Showtime days of Magic Johnson. Well, who the hell doesn’t? As the recent HBO documentary on Johnson and Boston’s Larry Bird made so perfectly clear, the two players gave the NBA a truly wonderful era. But here’s a news flash: We will never see another Magic and Larry because you don’t turn out special players like that on demand. They were not the product of a system. They were magical players, once-in-a lifetime gifts from God.

In the absence of that, Jackson has helped create the next great era of pro basketball. The era of the triangle offense, if you will. Like the era of Larry and Magic, when this era is gone, it won’t be duplicated.

So Jerry Buss should think twice about hurrying to usher the Triangle Era out the door so that he can get back to Showtime. These eras themselves are special things. They come our way once in a lifetime. We get players like Kobe and Magic and Bird and Jordan and coaches like Jackson and his longtime assistant Tex Winter once in a lifetime.

So with all due respect, Dr. Buss — and I sincerely mean with all respect for you have been a great owner — please leave the fucking poker games for Vegas.

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.

This blogging stuff is all brand new for all of us. And it’s changing every day as more and more websites and blogs come online giving more and more people power and voice, not just to write but to interpret things.

I spend months and months writing a book while I teach about 100 media writing students per semester. That doesn’t allow much time for blogging until my book is finished. Then I wade back into blogging and reporting, which is highly experimental these days.

We bloggers are on the edge of the world, the tip of the wave of thousands of years of human history.

The world of sports blogging is a rapidly changing and evolving thing. But it’s great fun to be a part of that.

My crazy work schedule leads to a strange pace here at lakernoise.com. I’m away intensely working on a book for months at time. Then I’m back. Lakernoise contributor and good friend Jorge Ribeiro has been able to help out by posting. And I look forward to his doing more, as well as more from any readers, regular or otherwise, who want to have their say.

Then there’s the online community. I can always count on certain sites, LA Times Lakers blog, FB&G, now Kurt Helin over at NBC’s pro basketball talk and the always reliable K brothers and Henry at Truehoop for an intelligent discussion of things. They and the many posters and readers are the heart of all the Lakers and pro hoops sites. They don’t always agree with what I write, but they take the time to read it and offer honest opinions.

Frankly, I love that sense of community and so do most of you.

And many of you have had opinions about my recent posting about LeBron James and the Lakers inner conflict on hoopshype.com. Frankly, it pissed off a lot of folks. Thanks, by the way, to those who took the time to defend me.

It was a gnarly story to write. There were two elements to the story: 1) LeBron’s quiet approach to the Lakers’ facilitators, 2) a more in-depth view of the conflict in Lakers ownership, management and coaching. I could have written about Jeanie and Phil and Jerry and Jim Buss at the top of the piece, but if I had put LeBron second I would have buried the lead. The big news is LeBron’s overture, and even if I had hidden that news down in my story, that’s what all the crazy websites of the sports world would have hyped.

Yet it’s all a subset of Phil Jackson. LeBron is a 25-year-old looking around at the major options in his life. Isn’t exactly thrilled with certain things about the Knicks and other options. Is a bit weary of Cleveland/Ohio where he’s lived all his life. He’s like Lloyd Dobler, really trying to figure out what he wants in life. Loves LA. The Lakers are cool, Phil is cool. Will Phil be available? That’s the option that LeBron finds very intriguing. He’s the most powerful person in the NBA besides David Stern and a few owners. He has the power of youth and talent.

In his world, the world of media and money and power, you very discreetly explore what you want.

But it’s upsetting to a lot of people that he would do that, and that I would report it.

The whole experience reminds me yet again how deeply people invest their emotions in their sports teams. Fans are insane about their teams. And that’s how it should be.

As for the intrigue of the Lakers, it’s a story that some want to know about. Others don’t.

In writing sports history, I am reminded every day that people, athletes and coaches and their agents, usually wait years to tell what really happened during a season.

My goal is not just to try to get the truth out about yesteryear. I also try to provide as much information as I can about what’s going on behind the scenes right now. It’s not always easy to get at that information, but I think it’s important to try.

I think fans have a right to know.

I also understand that such information can be jarring to fans and their teams.

But I like to emphasize what a lot of owners and commissioners and agents and certain fat cat players and coaches all too easily forget — it’s the fans who pay the bills, the fans who truly own the teams and the leagues.

And it’s the fans who have a right to know.

So I’ll continue to report stories and blogs just as I presented the LeBron James overture story.

If you like it or don’t like it, I trust you’ll let me know about it either way.

Peace,

RL

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