Say what you want about the LA Lakers, but they drive eyeballs to the NBA brand at large and remain one of, if not the most, fascinating sports franchises today. From the moment the late Kobe Bryant retired, the Lakers remained fixated on star hunting. The sports’ most dominant player, LeBron James joined the team back in 2018, and now with Luka Doncic (seemingly falling into their laps), the Lakers will remain the center of attention in the NBA ecosystem.
In A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers, NBA writer Yaron Weitzman examines the Buss family and their dynamic with LeBron from the moment he joined the team, tracing the warm-and-cold relationship between the two sides all the way to where things stand today. In a wide-ranging interview, Weitzman spoke with HoopsHype about receiving a warning of a potential lawsuit from the Lakers, the complicated relationship between Laker fans and LeBron, his pulse on how the Lakers were run over the past decade, and more.
How did this book come together?
Yaron Weitzman: I wanted to write about LeBron. I’ve been wanting to write about him for a while. I never really had before in my regular NBA writing because I live in New York and most of the stuff I do is kind of more zagging as opposed to a zig, right?
My original idea actually was the LeBron Heatles Big 3 Miami era, but for a few reasons, that wasn’t able to come through. So, I kind of pivoted, and then I realized that the LeBron Lakers seemed to be fertile ground to do the sort of stuff I like to do, which is the behind-the-scenes reporting.
In terms of LeBron, I’m guessing you were expecting he wouldn’t participate or help you with your book?
YW: Yeah, I knew that he doesn’t really do long-form interviews anymore. I thought maybe, sometimes we do fact-checking. Sometimes people want to participate, or I thought maybe there was a chance his publicist would be interested in helping more off the record. I think their approach is more that they don’t want anything to do with anything, on or off the record, and this way, when I get asked questions like this, the answer is, no, they have nothing to do with it. There’s no ownership there at all.
But I was not surprised, and I don’t begrudge that he doesn’t really do these anymore. It’s all basically stuff that his own content companies and things that he controls, which I have no issue with.
You’ve said the Lakers threatened you with a lawsuit while you were writing this. Were you surprised?
YW: I assume no one’s ever going to want to participate in anything, and that’s fine, especially in today’s world. I was surprised at how concerned it became about the book. I still don’t know why it happened. They hired this defamation lawyer before they saw any fact-checking. They might have thought they knew what the book was going to be, or they might have heard fourth-hand, but I questioned I was asking people, but they hadn’t seen anything. They had no idea, and they hired this lawyer before that, and I was hearing that Jeanie (Buss) was worried about the book before they saw anything. I genuinely don’t know why. I have some theories, but I genuinely don’t know why. And the other part that’s weird is I met Jeanie twice off the record, we did some informal chats, fact-checking, things like that.
I’m only sharing that we met off the record because she’s talked about it in interviews. When I met with her the first time, she was not into the idea. I remember something along the lines of like, I don’t see why there needs to be a book on this, why is this a book. I don’t begrudge her. That’s also not her call to make.
I’m always surprised from a PR standpoint, why people don’t just get on the phone and talk with reporters. I think it usually benefits them. Not my call. It’s not a big deal.
You mentioned that you got together with Jeanie and she was asking questions about why you were doing this? Was it before or after she started getting legal representation involved?
YW: No, that was like a year and a half earlier. We met twice, once in Las Vegas at Summer League, and once in L.A. for lunch. I wish I had the timeline, but at least six months, if not a year, between that second meeting and me getting a letter from their lawyer.
You had a footnote in the book where you wanted to speak with D’Angelo Russell about his first stint with the Lakers, and he said he didn’t have anything good to say about them and could talk with you then and there, and then funny enough, he gets traded to the Lakers six months later. Did you find a lot of other former players who had animosity towards the Lakers?
YW: I did not get much animosity. Russell Westbrook did not want to talk. I’m guessing there would be animosity there, but he didn’t talk to me. I don’t wanna say animosity, but I got the impression that Josh Hart‘s experience there was not great that first year with the Lakers. But honestly, none of those guys had a good experience. I spoke to Brandon Ingram about it and he acknowledged that it was tough and some things LeBron did that year frustrated him. But he also said, looking back, I was immature and looking back, I understand, I have more understanding of it.
Did you get any pushback from players about this book?
YW: I haven’t heard anything from any players. I shouldn’t say players, but I don’t know how many 22-year-old men are reading books.
The players are on their phones in the locker room. So if they see something, it’d be because it was picked up on NBA Central or whatever, or an Instagram account, not because they’re reading the book.
The botched LaMarcus Aldridge signing. That had to come from the Buss family’s inability to have a pulse or have employees who understood what made these players tick, right? How did that play out with other free agencies afterwards?
YW: I’m trying to remember. So Dwight Howard left, which is like the first blow to this idea of the Lakers’ exceptionalism and glory, right? Like we had learned later that Howard is no longer the player he once was, but we have this not too far removed from being MVP candidate star, leaves on his own fruition, not only leaves, takes a pay cut to leave. That’s historically crazy for the Lakers. It kind of represented how things were changing. And the LaMarcus Aldridge thing, it’s almost just more of a punctuation on that era.
We have Jim Buss running the business, but it’s not going well, and Jeanie’s hands off, but she’s hovering over Jim, and he already’s going to lose his job because he’s not making the playoffs, and she’s going to hold him to this deadline. We don’t know who should be leading the free agency pitch. And we have Tim Harris speaking way too long, even though he’s not a basketball guy. I put that in the book because you need to illustrate how low things were and how far they had fallen, and why LeBron joining X years later represented such an important thing to happen for the Lakers at Jeanie Buss specifically, why it mattered so much, and why and how far they had fallen before he came.
What are your thoughts now, after spending so much time on this, about how many Lakers fans want LeBron to leave ASAP?
YW: I think his relationship with LA is fascinating, and I wanna say age poorly. It’s just gonna be weird when we look back in 20 years that we’re not gonna know what to do with LeBron’s time in L.A. because the fanbase did not embrace him and has not fully embraced him. And his one highlight, and it’s certainly the top highlight, took place in a literal bubble with no fans there, so you don’t get to form emotional connections.
These are the things that fandom is built on. There’s no parade. Things like that matter. It sounds dumb and cliché, but it matters. And that won’t exist for this generation of Lakers fans. You mix that with the fact that he’s been there eight years and they have the one title, but you feel like it should have been more. Like if I told you in 2018 and you’re going to get eight mostly healthy seasons from LeBron. I think Lakers fans would have expected more than one.
When the Lakers retire LeBron’s jersey, do you think it’ll be a mixed applause or maybe even some boos?
YW: I don’t know if it’s boos, but just like it’s going to forced, right? I’ve gotten asked ‘Will there be a statue of LeBron outside of Crypto?’ and my answer is always, ‘I genuinely don’t know’. I think it’d be weird if there wasn’t because he’s a top two player, top five player, whatever you want to say all-time who spent eight years there, won a championship. Like you kind of have to do it, but is anybody like going to pray at the altar of the LeBron statue in L.A.? I don’t think so.
It won’t have the emotional significance to Lakers fans that some of the Kobe stuff did.
Do you think drafting Bronny was done merely to get LeBron to stick around for a couple more years?
YW: I don’t know if it’s black to white. I don’t know if it’s as A to B. I think it’s saying that it was very clear LeBron really wanted it, and so we’re going to do this for LeBron. I don’t know if it’s to get a stick around, and it’s the 55th pick. No one’s ever told this to me, but it’s the 55th pick, so whatever, right?
You can honestly argue if it gives you a happy LeBron… what’s the equation? Happy LeBron is worth X wins. So if drafting Bronny James equals plus X wins, because we get Happy LeBron that’s maybe more valuable than a 55th pick anyway.
To me, the interesting sliding doors moment is what if they don’t draft Bronny? What happens? How does LeBron react? I genuinely don’t know.
Much of the public probably didn’t know this, but from what you gathered with all your reporting, was Rob Pelinka the guy who would keep things hush-hush and not leak like in Luka trade?
YW: Rob Pelinka, by this point, it was very important to him to keep things quiet, and he has a really tight circle. The Lakers are not a big operation. There are front offices where the GM will have a conference call for a trade call and 20 people will be in the room on a conference call discussing these things, or talking about trades, but maybe not the actual trade call, but then they’ll come in and debrief the entire team. Pelinka is basically operating on an island for the most part. Jeanie is obviously involved, the Rambis or whatever, but it’s not like scouts and analytics guys know what trade’s about to happen. So it made sense that something like this could happen. It could be kept quiet.
I know you wrote a chapter at the end for the Luka trade. And then Jeanie sold the team earlier this year. How much did that throw a wrench in the process of writing your book?
YW: The Luka Doncic trade was more. I was done. I finished the book. My last scene was gonna be LeBron and Bronny kind of walking off the corridor that first game together. That was gonna be like the end.
After the Luka trade, I talked to my editor. We had to open it up or I got them to agree, I should say, I needed to give you a couple of weeks to just get some of this in here… because it needs to be in there.
And then the sale came through. So I got an extra chapter for Luka. For the sale, I was able to get a paragraph in- So, yeah, it was like one of the things where I was like, ‘Oh, come on’, but then, I also felt like it added a nice little bookend there. The book captures the end of going through the Jeanie Buss era and now she sold the team. So I don’t mind it.
The pick swapping part in the book about Rob Pelinka saying Jeanie didn’t know what that was… I’m guessing you sourced that pretty well. Was that one in particular where Lakers PR got pretty defensive?
YW: The story isn’t that Jeanie didn’t know what pick swaps were. The story is that Rob Pelinka told David Griffin that Jeanie Bus doesn’t know what pick swaps are. That’s different, so that’s Rob Pelinka saying that.
And this is on me, because maybe I wrote it poorly. Some people have misunderstood this. I had to write very carefully for legal reasons.
I’ve never said Jeanie Buss doesn’t know what pick swaps are. The only person who’s ever said that, according to my reporting, is Rob Pelinka. Now, the Lakers claim he didn’t, that was never said. And then I think they would claim that. GMs say all the time, ‘Well, my owner wants this, my owner doesn’t understand this’. It is a negotiation tactic? I can’t speak to that. I’m just relaying the thought from the room there.
Was there any particular story that you initially had in drafts, but you had to cut off due to word count?
YW: The one thing I was interested it, and it was just really hard to report is like the Rich Paul–Worldwide Wes relationship.
It’s an interesting storyline in terms of NBA history. These are two really important figures in the NBA world, and they overlap, and they have history together, and there’s some conflict between them, it’s some strife, and it’s just, I wanted to kind of get to the root of it, and I just couldn’t get there.
You can buy A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers by NBA writer Yaron WeitzmanHERE.
This article originally appeared on Hoops Hype: Yaron Weitzman Q&A: I think Laker fans would have expected more than one title with LeBron James
