Pacers president Larry Bird sees a lot of himself in Lakers president Magic Johnson: 'He’s got a lot to learn'

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They didn’t just can the general manager before the trade deadline, they canned him and his boss for, in effect, Magic Johnson. Magic, the former Laker player/coach/mini-owner, will look to eventually hand the reins (in the weeks before perhaps the most important NBA draft for the Lakers since it settled on James Worthy No. 1 overall in 1982) to Rob Pelinka, a neophyte would-be GM who also happens to be Kobe Bryant’s agent.

Two of the team’s owners recently attempted to stage a remarkable (if, in effect, sad as hell) coup with another of the team’s part-owners. The three owners in question are all related as siblings, we should remind, as the usurpers included brothers Johnny and Jim (recently outed from his post as basketball operations president) and sister Jeannie (currently moving on from her longtime relationship with Knick prez Phil Jackson) the widely respected president of business operations on the club.

The brothers later, rather feebly and to the earned belief of absolutely nobody, later walked back their roles in the attempt at the coup after being shot down by Jeannie Buss’s legal counsel in court.

In order to add to the growing list of famous Mad Libs involved, Indiana Pacers president and longtime Laker combatant Larry Bird decided to drop in with some rare, on-record comments about his interactions with the new Lakers, same as they were, and Magic Johnson specifically:

 

“He’s got a lot to learn,” Bird said. “But he took the challenge and I’m sure he’s ready for it. There’s just so much to learn about it.”

Bird would probably be the first to acknowledge that the idea that he was left with an NBA team of his own to run – as he was with the Pacers, returning back in the summer of 2003 after three years spent away from the league – seems like a rather ridiculous thing in retrospect.

It’s not an acknowledgement of insecurity or low self-esteem to point out that, in looking at the first days on a new job nearly 14 years later, the 2017 version of Larry Bird probably wouldn’t trust the 2003 version to take over any club in full. After all, 2003 Larry Bird once dealt Brad Miller (who would go on to make several All-Star teams) for Scot Pollard and Danny Ferry.

Larry had help, in the form of a basketball giant in forever-Pacer el jefe Donnie Walsh, whereas Johnson (working in the skinflint front office that until recently prominently featured, at Jim Buss’ behest, a position for a friendly bartender-turned-scout named “Chaz”) has no such buttress. Not even a celebrated middle guy, current or future NBA lifers, as Joe Dumars had during his early years with Detroit, or as Danny Ainge had in Boston.

Nah, we’re just a few months removed from Byron Scott (Magic’s former backcourt mate and chief Laker three-point shooting threat during the legend’s later years) telling anyone who would listen that three-pointers don’t make the measure of a man, or a championship team. That’s what Magic’s working with – no wonder the guy was unable to snag Los Angeles native and Pacer All-Star Paul George at the trade deadline.

Not that Larry was keen to give up on his star anytime soon. Not that they spoke at length about the stud, who becomes a free agent in 2018, during what Bird clarified was a “five minute” call before the Feb. 23 trade deadline. From Tania Ganguli’s fantastic feature from the Los Angeles Times:

 

“I wasn’t motivated to move Paul George at the deadline,” Bird said. “I can’t remember if it was even brought up or not. I don’t think it was. It’s all fake news anyway. You know that. Somebody’s gonna start it and [it] just was a snowball effect. [The phone call] was not about Paul George.”

No, it was about getting back on track as friends and jovial sorts before returning to the world – unseen since the early 1990s – of day-to-day combatants. With competitor’s box scores and June Finals pairings now replaced by July free agent meetings and, well, a competitor’s box scores.

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This doesn’t mean the Lakers are on the fast track to discuss things at great length with the Pacers, though, Bird warns. The guy hasn’t even signed off on a deal with his old Celtics team, not with that punk little brother of an ex-teammate running the show there since the same year Larry took over in Indiana:

 

“I’ve been here for, I don’t know how many years, 12, 13, and I haven’t made a deal with Danny Ainge yet,” Bird said. “That should tell you something. I’ve always been closer with Danny, because I played with him for all them years, than Earvin.

 

“Talked to Danny about a lot of trades, but never did one. I just feel it’s gotta be a fair deal for both sides and we never got there. Maybe he thought it was fair, but I didn’t think so.”

If that doesn’t fill Laker hearts with cheer, do remember that at least they don’t have to go back to the stylings of Jim Buss, who somehow became the rare unsympathetic firee last week.

The pathetic attempts to stylize Jim and his brother’s coup against Jeanie – those two fumbling about with the crinkled dollar bills that dad gave them, at the video game poker machine at the end of the bar, while Jeanie Buss runs an actual billion dollar business – only added to a lacking legacy.

The write-through on that legacy isn’t finished. On Monday, via TMZ, Jeanie pointed out in court documents that her brother had “ample time” to turn his Lakers around on the court prior to his needed dismissal:

 

“It must be pointed out that Jim has already proven to be completely unfit even in an executive vice president role,” Jeanie says.

 

She goes on to say if Jim and Johnny are left in charge, they might fire Magic Johnson — “who has been hired to turn around the damage done by Jim Buss.”

(“Even in an executive vice president role.” It’s a gig that Jeanie Buss looks down upon. Same with Magic Johnson. Those two don’t usually have to deal with the VPs in the room.)

For those rightfully concerned – in the wake of unspectacular scouting efforts from former pros-turned-GMs in Sacramento and New York – about Magic Johnson’s ability to cover each waterfront in his time as the franchise’s lead basketball voice, do recall the 1998 sentiments of Mr. (and not “Dr.”) Buss:

 

“Evaluating basketball talent is not too difficult,” Jim told Sports Illustrated’s Franz Lidz to show he was ready for his new role. “If you grabbed 10 fans out of a bar and asked them to rate prospects, their opinions would be pretty much identical to those of the pro scouts.”

Hiring a bartender named “Chaz” to help shore up your scouting department might scan as cool for some teams, even NBA teams, but Jim Buss is not a guy you would trust to define “cool” for any setting. This remains the family that once fired scouts, because there were no games to scout. They’ll have a lot of making up to do.

It might start with the team’s relationship with its coach (and its franchise player at this point) in Luke Walton. Walton was drafted by former GM Mitch Kupchak and for years worked in the organization as Buss steadied his ascent toward whatever the hell Jim Buss later became before his 2017 firing.

Walton, understandably, asked his ex-bosses if they were going to be around for the ride upon meeting with club officials prior to the signing of his five-year deal during the last offseason. From a discussion with USA Today’s Sam Amick:

 

“Honestly, it wasn’t ever clear to me (that Jim and Kupchak would be on their way out) because when I interviewed that was one of the questions I asked, was ‘Are we going to be in this together?’ And they said ‘Yeah,’ so I was under the assumption that (it was) Jimmy and Mitch. So I wasn’t worried about this or that. I was expecting that that was the front office, the whole time I was going to be here, at least for a while, so there wasn’t any uncertainty with me.”

Any NBA front office executive, even one as reportedly relenting as Kupchak, probably should have known that the clock was certainly ticking on the uneasy partnership between Kupchak and Jim Buss, but both were right to assure Luke Walton that they’d be in place for the expectant future at least. While Walton seems like Mr. Laker in shape, and Los Angeles remains a forever-draw, there still had to be some convincing when it came time to leave the Golden State Warriors for a mess such as this.

Comparing the Warriors and Lakers in unfavorable terms for the Lakers, something outrageous to even consider a half-decade ago (when the Lakers were shocking the post-lockout league into conniptions, of course, prior to dealing for Dwight Howard and Steve Nash), should be evidence enough of a fall. Jim Buss, perpetually the owners son, still didn’t see the writing on the wall as his final months droned on, it seemed. Even if he was the one who primed the wall for painting.

(Just kidding. Jim Buss is the son of an NBA owner. He probably just assumes the houses come already painted.)

At least the Lakers are talking, something that wasn’t the case with coach Byron Scott running the show, as inaction and silence have an impressive way of digging a ditch even deeper than called for. Coach Walton has already pointed out that not only was he assured the Laker front office would remain intact for an undetermined amount of time, but that the sense of permanence was actually important to him – that’s a strong step, even if it did nothing to save Jim Buss’ title and Mitch Kupchak’s job.

Buss and Kupchak’s last major signing, veteran forward Luol Deng, was brought in just after the duo spent an ungodly amount of money on thirty-something centerTimofey Mozgov less than an hour into NBA free agency. Deng is already out of the team’s rotation and, in a rare move for a 31-year old former All-Star working in the first year of a four-year, $72 million deal, out of the rotation.

Walton didn’t beat around the bush when he told the press that the Lakers are “trying to get looks at all the young guys that we can.” Deng, to his unending credit, gets it:

 

“I totally understand what we’re doing,” Deng told Southern California News Group. “He wants the guys to be in situations where they learn and play minutes. It’s always about what we’re trying to do. Why am I going to be on the bench if I’m not playing?”

As a result, Luol Deng (currently averaging 7.6 points, on 38 percent shooting) and 5.3 rebounds in 24 minutes a game) will be off the team’s pine entirely while he sticks on the team’s healthy, yet “inactive” list of employees:

 

“He wants to play the young guys, so I’m not going to play,” Deng said. “So there’s no point of being on the active roster and sit on the bench. He’s got to keep all the guys he’s going to play and evaluate.”

Last year, Byron Scott would have probably hired a skywriter to inform Deng of his plans. Jim Buss would have signed off on the decision, prior to asking Scott to pay for the service.

It’s a start, and despite the misgivings about Magic Johnson’s mid-February ascension, this is workable timing. The team will be away from active basketball in a month, and it needs to lose as many games as possible so as to ensure a top-three placement in this June’s draft, as bad lottery luck could see the team punting its top draft pick (and, to an extent, the mostly hellish 2016-17 turn) to the Philadelphia 76ers as a result of that Steve Nash trade.

The team, at 19-44, has nowhere to go but up. Not because of any dignified (outside of the continual, outstanding presence of Jeanie Buss) posturing prior to this rebuilding project, but because even after all those wasted years the Lakers still have a small on and off-court core (with Luke Walton falling somewhere in the middle, as coaches often do) of new and old worth getting excited about. The team just needs Magic Johnson to not embarrass himself during the switchover. So far, so good.

It’s good even without Paul George (for the time being, naturally). That damned Larry Bird had to go and get in the way, again.