Lakers coach Luke Walton adjusting to new landscape in Los Angeles
LOS ANGELES — Among the many things Luke Walton has going for him as coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, there's this: he actually talks with Jeanie Buss.
Every so often, the 36-year-old will pop in to those corner offices at the team’s practice facility in El Segundo, Calif., where Jeanie and her longtime friend, Linda Rambis, work. Walton is nothing if not personable, not to mention savvy, and so the occasional chat with the team president and governor about the state of affairs is something he can handle.
There have been many signs of upheaval in Laker Land over the past few years, but one of the more subtle ones is that the person who wielded the most power had little, if any, contact with the most prominent people on the basketball side. Jeanie, whose late father, Jerry Buss, not only gave her the top business side position but the purple and gold hammer over the entire organization, never spoke to former coach Mike D’Antoni and complained about having very little contact with his successor, former Laker Byron Scott.
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With Jeanie Buss' frustration in the team's steep decline growing, she took action last month, firing her brother, Jim Buss, and longtime general manager Mitch Kupchak while bringing back dear friend Magic Johnson. But it got uglier last week, when Jim and his brother, Johnny Buss, began an attempt – by way of the Los Angeles County Superior Court – to strip Jeanie of her power, a ploy that appears doomed from the start.
Now Walton finds himself in a bit of an awkward place. While he has an open line of communication with Jeanie Buss, the executives who gave him a five-year, $25 million deal to the lead the Lakers are gone. Now he is working with Johnson and soon Rob Pelinka, the longtime agent of Kobe Bryant who is set to take over as general manager.
Walton's easygoing nature, in other words, has sure come in handy.
As Walton told USA TODAY Sports, he was caught off-guard by the removal of Buss and Kupchak. Even with all the warning signs, from the oft-referenced family timeline that Jim had put in place in April 2014 to the divide between the siblings, he took the job with the belief that he’d work with the Jim Buss-Kupchak front office for “the whole time I’d be here,” as he put it. And then came the morning of Feb. 21.
“I was driving to breakfast (when he heard that they had been fired),” Walton said. “And yeah, I was surprised. We had a meeting scheduled with all four of us (Walton, Jim, Kupchak and Johnson), and I was going to breakfast before the morning and then my phone started blowing up, so I came in.
“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.”
But a life growing up in the NBA was more than enough to teach Walton, son of former NBA great Bill Walton, that things can always change. As such, it’s an onward and upward approach to the new Lakers landscape. He’s the first to admit he didn’t know Johnson well before, too, so they are in the midst of a getting-to-know-you period.
“Obviously being a Laker, (Magic used to) come in and talk to our teams occasionally, and that was kind of it,” Walton said. “At whatever event (they were at), we’d talk, say hi. But it was not a really deep relationship or anything like that.”
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Walton knows that finding a new rhythm might take some time. With the Lakers (19-43) floundering in the standings and the focus on the continued development of D’Angelo Russell, Julius Randle, Brandon Ingram and Jordan Clarkson, he doesn’t have time to ponder the heavy questions about the franchise’s future. And considering the Lakers stand to benefit greatly from even more losing, a byproduct of the top-three protected pick in the June draft that they hold, his task isn’t enviable.
“This is an incredible opportunity,” he said. “We get the opportunity to try and rebuild and get the Lakers back on top, (and) yeah I get really frustrated with losing. It’s tough to sleep at night, but by the time I wake up in the morning, I’m normally very positive and excited driving into work about what we get to do for the day. That’s kind of the approach I take going into it.
“I took the job knowing that nothing quick is going to happen. There’s no team in the league that wins with a bunch of young guys. So you let them make mistakes, you stay on them about mistakes, you show them mistakes, time after time, and then allow them to learn from those mistakes. And then the pain and frustration from losing and grinding through this, as the guys get older and start to mature and start winning, there’s a toughness built in with that, I think, going through that process where when you come out the other side you’re a much tougher and stronger team.”
All the while, with Magic running point in the front office and the prospect of bigger moves to be made, the communication that is already serving him well will most certainly continue.
“I’ve got to spend my nights breaking down film, so I’ve got to prioritize who I’m spending my time with,” Walton said. “For me, that’s coaching my guys and trusting that Magic and the Busses are going to get the other stuff done and worked out. And I do, I believe that they’ll make the right calls and we’ll be back at some point.”
Follow USA TODAY Sports' Sam Amick on Twitter @sam_amick.
