I kinda fear what Magic putting “his people” in place would have looked like. Couldn’t be worse than Kurt, Linda, and Rob probably though, so this is a no-win scenario, all come out looking bad. The “Magic made people have panic attacks” part of the article today didn’t really bother me today anyway though, as much as he has to defend himself for that now. This is the NBA, it’s billions of dollars, yeah, you should probably try to create a happy work environment because that’s just the best way to operate, but it can’t always be that way, and if you can’t handle that you probably shouldn’t be working for the Lakers. I’m not gonna get all fake mad about Magic being a tough businessman, the stuff about him showing up once a week or once every two weeks, overruling the scouting department, reading Rob’s menu of roster/trade moves and picking one, all that bothers me way more, that’s inexcusable crap if you’re supposed to be turning the Lakers around.
Boo hoo. You had a panic attack because for once, you had to actually work and not be covered by Jeanie Buss and others? I don't have a problem with Magic being tough. I have a problem with him being incompetent though. And like others have said...if even a tenth of this is true...we are seriously f***ED. Also, this was way more of a hit on ROB than it was Magic....and even bigger hit to Klutch/Rich/LeBron than it was on Magic... I better see Jeanie come out and defend this....she has to say something now. Staying silent will be about the worst thing she can do right now...
It's Linda's team, i expect her to step up and say a few words. Jeanie can stick to watching puppies...
Yeah, you are right about that, forgot what a turd he was for a second, but at least they got rid of him. They have a good FO now, starting to look pretty enticing to me.
You know, IF Magic had done ANY of the accusations asserted in that hit piece, then there should be a trail. Human resources, Jeannie Buss, Linda Rambis, someone in the chain of command should have talked to him and documented it. The fact that they didn't tells me there are two possibilities. One, it never happened and the author is a complete a**-hole to print this piece of garbage. Or, Two, it happened and Jeannie has no mechanism to deal with it and instead of being a professional she played games that forced Magic out and then when he got angry, she perpetrated this hit piece on him, which makes her look like a real turd. She needs to defend the team and end this charade somehow.
Or three, he’s Magic Johnson, nobody tells him no, and he does what he wants. When he got pushback on wanting Luke AND Pelinka out, he said F it, I’ll go back to my regular life, and I don’t blame him. This isn’t a Magic hit-piece, it makes Rob and Jeanie look just as bad as him, it’s not even a Lakers hit-piece, it’s an exposé, the truth being revealed by those who were there to experience it every day and finally decided to speak. If Jeanie out this article all she did was make the entire org look like more of a joke.
But how do we know it really happened? Personally, if I was Magic, I would sue the reporters for defamation of character and if they had anything that went back to the Lakers FO, I would sue them. If Jeannie supports the things they are saying about Magic, then she is the biggest turd I know in sports today. She better show that she is the adult left standing and not a part of the problem. I accept Magic made some mistakes, he has owned a couple of them but then he moved on. I am waiting for Jeannie to own them and quit digging the hole, or resign.
Why would Magic need to sue? Does this seem to have hurt him or his brand/businesses in any way? Not that I’ve seen. It isn’t a crime to be tough on your employees, so he won’t suffer any actual consequences, it’s just for ESPN ratings and will die down eventually. Seriously, did Magic look anything less than comfortable and care-free when ESPN sat him down with probably his 2 biggest supporters and old friends at the network? The term sycophants came to mind while watching it, and then I later saw twitter using the same word, which just made me laugh. This is such a non-story regarding Magic in the end, like I said before the only things that bugged me was the stuff about how little he actually showed up to work( which I completely buy because pretty much every Lakers writer/reporter has confirmed it) and his overruling our scouting department in the draft. Magic will be back on First Take in July though, he said as much today, so this will go on because ESPN eats it up. And also, if you’re waiting for Jeanie to speak on this or resign, you’re going to be waiting a loooooong time.
You are probably right. I guess it won't really damage him. I wish he would just hire someone to beat the s*** out of someone!! LOL I'm joking, sorta. I have always looked at it, that Magic was supposed to be the decision maker here. The guy with the most knowledge on how to put players together and make a winning team, the guy who would attract the best players in the league to want to play under him. Honestly, I don't really care if he only worked 5 hours a week if he has the right people doing the legwork he needed. If he was making the right calls, then his time involved should not be that important. I am sure we could argue for hours how much time his job should take. If people would have been happy with the results, then this would all be a moot point. Since the team is not really coming together as fast as we had hoped, everyone is pointing fingers at everyone else and trying to protect their positions. That is a disaster. If I was Magic, I would have walked away too but I would have talked to Jeannie first. I think he saw the writing on the wall and knew she was not going to run the team the way he felt it needed to be run. She is going to continue to fail, IMHO. She is too emotional, has too little knowledge and is relying on people with no experience or ones that have not had much success in this league up to now. The idea that she thinks she can turn it around with her methods baffles me. What is she doing that shows growth and increased knowledge? She seems to be hiding from the press over all of this, which I also think is a losing formula. She seems in WAY OVER HER HEAD. She doesn't know who to control the narrative. Others have been much better at this than she is.
Jeanie may or may not speak on it, but expect the Lakers to hit back in some way, just as they did with the stories about Magic.
To me, this article didn't include anything we didn't know already about Magic... It sheds some more light on the incompetent snake he teamed up with than it does hurt Magic. Magic never came across as particularly bright of a person, nor did he look like a shy guy who wouldn't vehemently impose his will. I just hope the media continues to bash the Lakers until we see serious changes and hopefully Jeanie disappears from the scene.
Regarding Magic, I’ve never seen him as the most knowledgeable guy. What was initially intriguing about him, was he said he was going to come in and put the best people possible in every place he could, and I assumed he meant like with the Dodgers. But he didn’t do that, maybe he didn’t have the full authority, but he didn’t. As far as knowledge of players, have you not seen him tweet? Did you not see him coach? The greatest players of all time are often not close to the greatest talent evaluators, GMs, coaches, in fact a large number of them have been disasters at it. This guy is not a good talent evaluator, he’s one of the best to ever play the game, a Laker legend, but that’s on the court, read these tweets. https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/...pretty-questionable-player-evaluation-skills/ To the second part of your post, that Jeanie thought Magic was qualified for this shows her lack of vision in only relying on Laker family. That she thought Rob Pelinka was qualified because Kobe told her he could do the job is a joke. She couldn’t get a second opinion? Because apparently everyone not named Kobe can’t stand the guy. So yes, I agree, she’s in over her head, she refuses to bring in qualified people to right this thing and wants it run like the family business, and she is too emotional when it comes to her friends and maybe even her attachment to players. It was reported she was mad at who Magic offered up for AD, and in this business you can only be so loyal to your players who aren’t stars and going to make your team win, you can’t have players like Kuz and Zo looking untouchable when they really haven’t done a whole lot just because they love being Lakers and are like family. It’s not family unless we’re talking players like Magic and Kobe who stayed their whole careers, and even then it’s not fully family until the end of their career because they can always be traded if it betters the franchise and you’re a good owner.
