Lakers: "Legacy" Week 3 - Showtime's Near-Three-Peat
Let's unpack the latest episode of "Legacy: The True Story of The L.A. Lakers," the stellar new Lakers documentary miniseries covering the team during its stewardship under the Buss family. The third episode of the show debuted last Monday and covered the Showtime Lakers from 1986-1989, as well as the rise of Dr. Jerry Buss from a Great Depression-era Wyoming childhood spent mostly in poverty to a lucrative real estate career.
Despite some middling reviews, yours truly has really enjoyed what he's seen from this show thus far.
We start out with the Showtime Lakers reminiscing about the players' and personnel's unusually close relationship during the period. The team would gather on the road for group outings, including movies and dinners, and various players, coaches, executives and trainers would host team get-togethers when the club played home games in-season.
The documentary then tracks Buss's childhood trajectory and his uneasy relationship with his stepfather and half-siblings. At 16, Buss left home to work a variety of taxing physical jobs. Jim Buss, who's really clinging to that long-hair-under-a-hat look, offered some solid commentary during this section. Dr. Buss completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Wyoming, on a full scholarship, within two years of touching down. At just 23 years old, he received a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from USC. Buss started out working in aerospace, but soon became a real estate tycoon through a series of clever speculative purchases.
Eventually, we reach the historical terrain covered by the excellent (if somewhat fictionalized) new HBO series on this same phase of Lakers basketball, "Winning Time:" Jerry Buss's full-court press on then-Lakers and L.A. Kings owner Jack Kent Cooke, which involved a series of overtures at Cooke's Las Vegas digs. Unlike the HBO series, this gets into the nitty-gritty of the actual sale, which turned into something of a trade -- the Lakers, Kings and their then-home arena the Forum itself for the Chrysler Building!
Two former NBA owners also apparently were involved in the sale, as they leant Buss and his partner significant coin (i.e. in the millions) to help them complete the purchase. Who were the owners, you ask? Well you'll just have to watch for yourself.
We delve a bit into some of the conflict between the Buss kids. Johnny Buss, the eldest, opted to quit running the Los Angeles Lazers, an indoor soccer club Dr. Buss also owned. Next in line was the second-oldest, Jim Buss, though we get a bit of back-and-forth between Jim and Jeanie Buss, who felt that through her own aptitude she deserved first dibs at taking over for Johnny.
After the Lakers lost in five games to the Houston Rockets in the 1986 Western Conference Finals, the team felt it needed to add some size. James Worthy discovered that Dr. Buss had offered up Big Game James to the Dallas Mavericks for All-Star small forward Mark Aguirre and the rights to draft 6'11" big man Roy Tarpley. In modern interviews for the doc, Jerry West and Pat Riley both insist they had no idea about the move.
After West essentially threw his body in front of the deal, Worthy and Buss had a conversation to clear the air, which Worthy indicates helped cement their bond. Worthy stayed with the Lakers through his 1994 retirement, and now serves as the lead studio analyst for Lakers games via Spectrum SportsNet.
The documentary covers probably the best single season of this vintage of Lakers champions, 1986-1987. Los Angeles went 65-17 in the regular season, and 15-3 in their run to a fourth title with Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar at the helm.
Pat Riley's famous championship parade guarantee that the team would repeat the next season initially irked his entire squad, but it eventually became a goal everyone wanted to work towards. And sure enough, they did it, going 62-20 in the regular season to finish with the Western Conference's top seed once again. Eventually, L.A. would beat Mark Aguirre, the player for whom Worthy was almost dealt in 1986, and the Detroit Pistons in a hard-fought seven game 1988 NBA Finals series that Isiah Thomas still swears his Bad Boys would have won, had he not badly sprained his ankle near the end of the sixth contest. Worthy won the Finals MVP.
Detroit would exact its revenge the next season. The 1988-89 Lakers went 57-25, still good for the top record in the West, and they subsequently swept the conference 11-0 in the first three rounds of the playoffs en route to a second consecutive Finals matchup against the Pistons. Detroit would go on to brutally sweep Los Angeles, although each game was fairly close, with an average victory margin of just 6.75 points. Fun fact: Pistons reserve big man John Salley would eventually win a title as a deep-bench backup on the 2000 team.
Though they won back-to-back titles in 1987 and 1988, the Lakers would miss their chance to three-peat with the 1989 defeat. At least until the dawn of the new millennium, anyway.
Episode four premieres tomorrow on Hulu, and seems likely to cover Kareem's 1988-89 retirement tour (not touched on here), as well as the Lakers' return to the Finals against a very tough new foe...
