“Shaquille O’Neal is not coming back” Jeanie Buss reveals the stern conversation her father had with Phil Jackson
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Jennie Buss talks about Shaquille O'Neal
Shaquille O’Neal is without any question, one of the dominant forces to have ever played in the NBA. He played for 19 seasons in the league and 6 different franchises in those years. But his most dominant and productive performances were in Los Angeles Lakers; where he won a 3-peat pairing with Kobe Bryant and also was named Finals MVP in those championship runs. Shaq, in total, won four championship rings, two scoring titles, an MVP award, and 3 NBA Finals MVP awards, many other awards with his gameplay.
Jeanie Buss, now Lakers president was talking on SiriusXM NBA Radio and shared the story of her father deciding to trade Shaq. The late Jerry Buss ran the team in 2004 and decided to get rid of both Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson.
When asked about one thing that she wishes the Lakers didn’t do, here’s what Jeanie Buss said, “When Shaq got traded, that was really hard. … My dad made the decision, he couldn’t pay Shaq the money that Shaq could earn under the collective bargaining agreement. And a trade was coming up.”
A surprising move by the Lakers ended up parting easily with their championship-winning coach Phil Jackson also. Jennie recalled, “So it’s the end of the season and Phil [Jackson] went to meet with my dad. … Phil went in and said, ‘You can’t trade Shaq, he’s the most dominant player in the league.’ And my dad said, ‘I’m gonna trade him, but it won’t matter to me because you’re not coming back as a coach either.'”
Championship hungry franchise was hit hard by Shaquille O’Neal and Phil Jackson’s move away from the Lakers as they missed the playoffs a year later.
The trade for Shaquille O’Neal changed the course of the Los Angeles Lakers as a franchise on both occasions.
Los Angeles Lakers managed to make their mark on the league winning 10-odd NBA titles in the league before Shaq arrived. But still, they were 2nd best franchise, behind arch-rivals Boston Celtics, who won nearly 15 titles in the NBA, and the emergence of the Chicago Bulls during that period was also making things difficult for them. Lakers were desperate to regain dominance, and the cunning Owner took a huge decision to trade for the powerful and skillful center from Orlando Magic and pairs him with the youngest NBA prodigy Kobe Bryant.
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But the experiment didn’t succeed right from the start there was some fine tuning required to make them a championship team. But then the skillful pair suddenly got guidance from one of the top minds of the league – Phil Jackson. The team became “hard to beat” with offensive stats skyrocketing for them. The LA Lakers, led by Shaq and Kobe Bryant, won three championships in a row in the early 2000s.
The three-peat team looked solid and on course for a quadruple – but were knocked out in the second round in 2003 by eventual winners and a year later, they lost to the Detroit Pistons in the NBA Finals.
The power game within a team and many other issues forced the Lakers to take the tough decision to move Shaquille O’Neal their Finals MVP during the championship runs. Without O’Neal and Jackson, the Lakers went 34-48, missing the playoffs for the first time in 11 years.
So, when Shaq made it to the Lakers, he turned them into a championship team, reaching 4 NBA Finals and winning 3 of them rather convincingly, but his move away from them nearly sent the Lakers into a rebuilding phase, which later won 3 titles to level with the Celtics’ count at the moment.
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