CHICK: Just while I went on, Coop said,
"I'm getting nervous, Chick." I said, "That's good.
That's when you're at your best."
How are you? MICHAEL: Fine, Chick, and you?
CHICK: Good. And family good?
MICHAEL: Everybody's doing great.
CHICK: What about the Lakers?
The camaraderie of the club has been,
well, the same since you've been with 'em.
Always close.
- Very close, and I think that is one key that we're
so successful as far as our play out on the floor.
You know, I think, uh, teams that don't--
don't play together after the court,
they'll have a hard time, but what we do is,
we spend a lot of time together when we're on the road,
and I think that helps gels us when we come into the game.
[Sister Sledge's "We Are Family"]
The NBA at that time,
the cycle was, you play basketball,
you drive home, go home, don't be with anybody,
and then you meet, and you see each other at the game.
And that's when you come together.
But ours was like, we started hanging around each other
in the locker room, standing a little bit longer,
just sitting around talking.
- MVP, you got my $10?
- Aw, shit, dude. - Got my $5?
- [murmuring] - [laughs]
- I'm serious, man.
MICHAEL: When we left on the road trips,
we started eating, uh, going to movies.
SINGERS: ♪ We are family ♪
PLAYER: What we going to see?
PLAYER: "Bloodsport." PLAYER: I'll tell you what.
Let me have a big Red.
CASHIER: One, two, three medium drinks.
Two medium popcorns.
$17.36.
MICHAEL: This is the Lakers, and we're at the show.
This is Magic Johnson.
You can tell by the back of his head.
This is James Worthy.
Milt Wagner, you can tell by the Cadillac insignia
on his chest.
My main man, Byron Scott.
Enjoy yourself.
- There were a lot of get-togethers.
There were a lot, uh, of family, uh, parties.
Uh, it was almost, "Okay.
"You got Saturday, Coop.
"Okay, you got next Friday, Buck.
Okay, Chris and I got a week from Sunday."
And we'd have a dinner party.
- Whether it was Thanksgiving or if it was Christmas,
there was this collective effort.
PERSON: How you doing tonight, A. C. Green?
A.C.: I was in my rookie year,
so I can only compare to college
at this particular time.
But when I got to the pros,
it was just a family atmosphere,
and I was like, "I love this."
[crowd cheering] - Yeah!
JEANIE: I think for my father,
the team, the business,
here was a group of people that were, you know,
his family that he could count on.
It was creating the family that he never had growing up.
SINGER: ♪ California love ♪
♪ Ooh ♪
SINGER: ♪ California ♪
♪ Knows how to party ♪
♪ California ♪
PERSON: There he is. His first shot as an owner.
You think he likes it?
SINGER: ♪ California ♪
- At this moment, I can't believe it.
SINGER: ♪ California ♪
INTERVIEWER: What's the future?
You want to replace your father at the top?
- Yeah. [laughs]
SINGER: ♪ In the city ♪
BUSS: Between my daughters and my sons,
there are certainly enough sports teams to go around.
[2Pac's "California Love"]
INTERVIEWER: Are you and the rest of the family--
are you guys all on the same page?
♪ ♪
NEWSCASTER: The Lakers caught in the middle
of a family power struggle.
♪ ♪
BUSS: I think I've really left them with something.
[pensive music]
- His mother, she would work at night,
and she would wait till he was asleep,
and then she would leave.
And he would wake up, and then he couldn't find her.
So I think he felt abandonment by his mother.
JEANIE: When his mom remarried,
his stepfather wouldn't adopt him.
So his last name remained Buss
while the rest of his family, uh, was known as Brown.
And I think that really made him feel
that he didn't fit in the family.
JIM: His growing up in the West,
he never was handed anything,
and he always had to fight for it, you know, basically.
And he just understood what a dollar was.
He understood how hard.
If you work hard, you can make it.
And, you know, so every dollar he made,
he understood the effort behind it and earned it.
- He got a scholarship to the University of Wyoming
and graduated in less than two years.
He got his PhD at the age of 23 from USC
in physical chemistry.
And he went to work right out of school
in the aerospace industry.
NARRATOR: In 1959, Jerry Buss and a partner
began to see Southern California real estate
in terms of numbers that multiply.
They bought this small Santa Monica apartment building
for $130,000, and they multiplied it
into a $350 million empire of more apartments,
resorts, ranches, and this, the crown jewel, the Forum.
[upbeat piano music]
INTERVIEWER: Do you feel that you have a Midas touch?
- Compared to the complex equations that
you have to understand in chemistry,
business seemed, uh, kind of mundane.
- My dad, he had a computer for a brain.
You'd go into his office,
and he'd have a calculator on his desk.
But he never used a calculator.
He could do all the numbers in his head.
The calculator was for you.
In order to keep up with him,
you were gonna need a calculator.
INTERVIEWER: How did you manage to parlay
one apartment building into a real estate empire
that covers 4,000 apartment units, several hotels,
a ski lodge, a tennis resort in Mammoth Lakes,
property in Phoenix, and who knows what else?
- It was done a year at a time.
Uh, the first apartment we bought was 105,000.
There were about eight of us engineers,
and we joined forces.
- They were all of his friends, you know,
"Hey, can you throw in $1,000?
Can you throw in $5,000?"
He got everybody to come in.
FRANK: Almost immediately, Jerry and I were good friends.
And Jerry said one word.
Inflation.
If things go up, real estate goes up.
BUSS: We bought that first apartment with 12,500 each.
And then in the next year,
we bought a second apartment house
and exactly the same thing the third year.
Exactly the same thing the fourth year.
JOHNNY: California real estate was growing,
and he just jumped on the chance.
"Let's buy more apartment complexes."
He was, with his friends, cleaning out the pool,
mowing the lawn, and painting the building themselves.
Within 10 years, he was starting
to build his own buildings.
SINGER: ♪ All that I want ♪
♪ Whoa, yeah ♪
SINGER: ♪ That's what I want ♪
SINGER: ♪ Give me money ♪
INTERVIEWER: Is it true that as a kid
growing up in Wyoming,
you never missed an athletic event?
- Yeah, that's pretty much true.
Uh, I really was always probably the most
avid sports fan I've ever met, um,
and so if anything was going on anywhere nearby, I would--
I would always attend it.
And my enthusiasm hasn't waned, uh, as of this point.
[inquisitive music]
The man who owned the Forum was Jack Kent Cooke,
who also owned the Lakers and the Kings.
ANNOUNCER: And he shoots, he scores!
BUSS: And I was kind of waiting for him
to say, "They're for sale."
CLAIRE: Those of us working for him,
Mr. Cooke, he'll never sell.
It was his favorite toy.
BUSS: Jack moved to Las Vegas,
and I was investing rather heavily
in real estate in Las Vegas, so I would fly up there.
♪ ♪
While I was there, I would go over to his house
and talk about sports franchises,
and we would talk about me buying
the Lakers and the Kings.
- He had many visits with him.
- My dad spent a lot of time in Cooke's ear
trying to convince him that he was the right person
to buy the team.
BUSS: I did that for a year or so.
JEANIE: It might have taken a little bit longer
than he wanted it to.
- Jerry wanted a quick deal,
and Jack Cooke, a number of times--
let's put it this way here.
Jack Kent Cooke was not an easy person.
- I remember my dad calling me on the phone
and just saying, "Jack Kent Cooke called me.
Guess what it was about?"
BUSS: Finally, he said, "The Lakers are for sale."
JEANIE: Jack Kent Cooke told my dad
he was going through a divorce, and the judge decided
to give his ex-wife $41 million.
So he needed the cash.
So Judge Wapner, who later gained fame
as The People's Court judge, opened the door for my dad
to buy the Los Angeles Lakers.
- Yeah, I said, "So when is this gonna happen?"
He goes, "Right now."
INTERVIEWER: Did you yourself, Jerry Buss,
fork out $68 million for the club?
- No. No, I didn't.
STEVE: Jack Kent Cooke told him,
"I want to do this thing to save on taxes."
So Jerry says, "What do you have in mind?"
He says, "Well, you know, I've always liked
"the Chrysler Building in New York.
Could you get me that?"
[laughs] I said, "Well, oh, sure."
- Jack Kent Cooke's attorneys was trying
to do some kind of transaction that
would benefit Jack Kent Cooke.
CLAIRE: So Jerry started liquidating property
to see if he could get the Chrysler Building.
- You know, it was like this complicated scheme,
and he has to buy the Chrysler Building.
And I'm going, "Are you kidding me?"
FRANK: The day of the transaction,
it appeared that we were short roughly $3 million
to close the transaction.
- My dad said, "Well, this is gonna be tough.
"I just don't know how we're gonna
come up with the extra money to do it."
- So I borrowed 3 million from three of my friends--
Sam Nassi,
Don Sterling,
and Jack Bausch.
[cash register dings]
CLAIRE: Jerry bought the Chrysler Building,
and he exchanged it for Lakers, Kings,
arena--the whole package.
There was no money exchanged.
It was set to be the most complicated transaction ever
in the NBA that the closing papers
were the size of the Manhattan phone book.
BUSS: Upon its purchase, I was probably
the most impressed of all the people.
Everybody left the Forum to go home that night.
The lights were down low.
I took a portable chair, sat it out
in the middle of the basketball court,
lighted a cigarette, and leaned back,
and I thought, "Wow, I've really arrived."
- To think that he had nothing when he was little
to this-- i-it's just kind of crazy.
ANNOUNCER: So very entertaining.
Five minutes to wind up the final score
at the Fabulous Forum in Inglewood.
The defending MISL champions 5,
and the Los Angeles Lazers 2.
Stay tuned. We're coming back.
- Our first year with the Lazers was atrocious.
Atrocious.
I think we were 8 and 40 or something like that.
My dad relied on us winning or at least getting noticed
so that people would come to the games.
Of course, there was pressure by the fans and the media to,
you know, "Hey, get this going.
"You know, you can't sit here and be
8 and 40 every single season."
We lost money.
We lost probably at least $1/2 million
that first year, if not more.
You could tell at that time I was starting to, uh,
disassociate myself with a lot of people
that worked at the Forum, you know.
I mean, at first it was like, "Yeah, let's all be buddies.
Let's all be friends. Let's be family."
But my family didn't help me.
CLAIRE: I had a friendship with Charlie,
but he didn't wanna take advice.
And if you're not making the forward steps
that you'd like to make,
perhaps you should rethink things
and ask for some help.
- It was just a really hard period of time for me
because I, uh, I just couldn't take it anymore.
My dad said, "Do you want to talk about it?
"Do you want to talk about what changes
I can make or help you make?"
And I said, "No, Dad. I just really think it's over.
I just really think it's over for me."
It was too much pressure.
Um, you know, I haven't slept in three years.
Um, I'm working 24 hours a day.
I-I just can't do it anymore.
- I was shocked, you know, when my dad gave me the call
and just said, "Okay, I need you to run the Lazers."
And I'm like, "Well, what happened?"
You know, it was that kind of thing.
- I just needed some time off
to figure out what was going on.
Here I was, the oldest,
and I was being groomed for something.
And I said, "Truthfully, Dad, I don't see where I fit in."
And uh, yeah, I think it really hurt him.
I really think it hurt him.
- I spoke to my dad about it, and he said,
"Jeanie, you know, when you're the oldest son,
"you're expected
"to do everything.
Everything's supposed to come to you."
And, you know, he-- he worried about Johnny.
- I don't wanna say he's more emotional.
Um, I don't know if it was just the way
he was treated by my dad, I'm not sure,
but, you know, my dad asked me to do something, I do it.
So it wasn't very hard to take over there. Ha.
JOHNNY: I know from my father that Jeanie was upset
because she thinks that, you know,
the boys get everything first.
JEANIE: There was no conversation with me about it,
which at some level kind of hurt me.
JIM: Does she have a right to be upset?
I don't--I don't think so.
JEANIE: I looked at those opportunities
as things that either I wasn't considered for
or that he didn't think I was capable of doing.
And I wanted to prove that I could take on any challenge
that he threw at me.
- I mean, in which way did she have the right to take over?
By age? No, I was second, you know.
So I'm not sure what her basis of complaint would be,
but just the information that I know,
I know I don't see her reasoning
for getting upset at my dad, I don't know.
BUSS: I think you have to realize that children
are independent individuals,
and I don't see any conflict, uh,
between my daughters and my sons.
I think there's certainly enough
sports teams to go around.
- Me being ambitious, I-- you know, it was kind of like,
"I could run that team too."
Like, I always took on whatever,
but, you know, my understanding of the situation
was that my dad wanted Jimmy to have an opportunity
to run a team to see how he could do.
[crowd cheering]
ANNOUNCER: The Rockets are one game away
from ending the Lakers' championship race.
But now one second to go, and this game
very close to going into overtime,
and again, we must tell you...
- At the end of '86, we run into an incredible opponent.
Houston, they had the Twin Towers. [laughs]
Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.
ANNOUNCER: One second on the clock.
Sampson. [buzzer blares]
It goes! It goes! It's over!
Ralph Sampson has given the Houston Rockets
the Western Conference Championship.
BYRON: If we don't win the championship,
the season wasn't a good season.
So for us, you know, obviously, it wasn't a good season in '86.
SPORTSCASTER: You know, it's not by accident
that there hasn't been a repeat champion since 1969.
PAT: When we lost to the Twin
Towers, all of the sudden,
in somebody's mind, "We need to get another big."
DAVID STERN: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.
Welcome to the 1986 NBA draft. [applause]
- I was back in North Carolina watching the draft.
- Today's draftees will surely add
new dimensions to our game.
- So when it got to the Lakers' pick, I just kind of tuned in.
- I'm standing here with one of America's best-known
sports writers, basketball man,
Pete Vecsey from the "New York Post."
Pete knows everything there is about pro basketball.
Is Roy Tarpley gonna stay in Dallas?
- Well, they could definitely use him,
but the, uh, the, uh, Lakers have offered James Worthy
for Mark Aguirre and Tarpley.
- What the hell is going on?
- This was news to everybody, okay?
Because it came out in the media.
- Well, I was like, "What? No one told me about this.
At least I could have received a phone call."
- I didn't know about it, and there was one other person
didn't know about it-- Jerry West.
- I-I had no idea.
I was not even aware of it.
- When you lose people who are on the cho--
chopping block, definitely.
But uh, James Worthy is not the type of player
that you put on the chopping block
unless you have a pistol at your head.
WEST: I get a call from Dr. Buss and said to me,
"We just made a trade."
I said, "Oh, really?"
He said, "We're going to trade James Worthy
for Mark Aguirre and Roy Tarpley."
I said, "What?"
- I had also heard a quote that
Magic Johnson also approves this trade.
And I just--it just tore-- it just--it just tore me up.
MAGIC: Mark Aguirre was one of my best friends at that time.
So now everybody thought I was driving this trade.
MICHAEL: Magic was like, "Well, Coop, you know what?
"Hey, this is something that they're looking at.
What do you think about Mark Aguirre?"
And I just said I didn't think that was a move to make.
[tense music]
- And then my phone rang, and it was a reporter from LA.
The reporter caught me in a very emotional moment,
and I was like, "I don't know who the manager
"of this club is. I don't know who's running it.
Is it Jerry West? Is it Magic?"
You know, I was taking on these quotes.
- Jerry and I talked three times on the phone.
I said, "Jerry, you don't need me to work here."
I said, "You know, I just--" I said,
"We have a terrific team if we just play the right way."
And he said, "Well, I've already
made the deal with him," and I said--I said,
"Jerry, I don't wanna do this anymore.
Okay? I don't."
And I said, "I'm just telling you,
this will be a gigantic mistake if you do it."
BUSS: He said, "We shouldn't do this trade,"
and I said, "No, we should not do this trade."
- I get back to LA, and Dr. Buss
wants to talk to me.
His office had no windows.
There was this old panel wood.
He had his desk sitting up on a platform
just a little bit higher, you're kind of looking up.
I got my chest up pretty big, 'cause I'm like, "Yeah.
I said what I said."
And he's probably going to say, "I'm sorry."
He's, like, took a little hit from that cigarette,
put it down, and-- and he just started.
"James, I understand that, you know, you're upset.
"You hear your name in trade rumors,
and you act on quotes that might or may not be true."
And he looks at me, and he says,
"But when you say management," he said, "that's me."
[laughs]
After that, our relationship was closer
because he could see in me
probably the same thing he could see in his own kids.
Inexperience, fears,
whatever anxieties I had at 25, 26.
So for me, that was like,
"Oh, I can talk to him about anything.
"You know, he's open to conversation.
His door is open."
And that's-- I knew he was a cool owner,
but that's when I knew he was the best owner.
JEANIE: My dad realized that in our business,
you have to accept the realities
of what could be painful.
And of course, the first thing that comes to mind
is trading a player away.
JOHNNY: Even though it affected him emotionally
and physically at times,
meaning twice as many cigarettes,
twice as much alcohol, uh,
I think my dad always welcomed a challenge.
[basketball dribbling, shoes squeaking]
BYRON: 1986, we didn't get a chance
to get to the final to defend our title.
So we all had the same mentality, you know.
We lost, and we working out early
to make sure we don't
have that same feeling that we just felt.
PAT: Use your hands now.
All right. That's it.
There we go. Early two-man game.
MICHAEL: This team is made up of winners,
and this team loved challenges.
So it's a challenge now to see if we can do it again.
- We want that over the top.
Well, you gotta have goals, okay?
So I challenged the players to have
what I call career-best efforts,
that if everybody could go 1% above their career-best year,
we conceivably with 12 players in five categories
could have an overall improvement of 60%.
Eh--mathematically, it made sense.
I explained this to Jerry Buss.
He said, "Brilliant. That is a wonderful thing."
He said, "Now get 'em to do it."
That's when that team matured in '87
through all the adversity, all the good,
all the bad, all the joking, all that stuff,
and we were dominant.
We were beating teams by 20.
I mean, we were just dominant.
At the end of the season, we won 65 games,
and we had come to this point as a team
where we matured into a dynasty.
ANNOUNCER: The Forum in Inglewood, California,
where the 1987 NBA Championship
will be decided, either this afternoon in a...
STEVE: You could make arguments
one way or the other, but generally,
most people-- and I wouldn't dispute it--
feel that '87 team is considered
the peak of the Lakers.
- Behind us is maybe the largest
doctor's office in America.
Dr. Jerry Buss, did you ever realize
when you bought this franchise that it'd come to this?
- Well, we certainly hoped it would, Pat.
I mean, uh, from the very beginning,
this is the kind of thing we wanted to do,
but it's grown beyond my wildest expectation,
and I'm just thrilled with it.
ANNOUNCER: This is really not your typical
LA-Boston matchup.
For the first time in that rivalry,
we have a clear-cut favorite, and that's the Lakers.
Magic to Worthy. Two more.
STEVE: The one moment everybody remembers in '87
is Magic's baby sky hook.
ANNOUNCER: Five seconds to go.
Magic with a hook shot. Scores with 2.
- You think the Lakers have won.
Larry Bird gets into the corner
and throws up a shot that just misses the 3
that would have won it for the Celtics.
ANNOUNCER: And the Lakers have won,
and Pat Riley and the Lakers dance off the court.
- '87 was a problem for us. We had a lot of injuries.
When Kevin broke that foot, he wasn't the same.
Bill wasn't playing. Danny wasn't right.
Robert wasn't right.
But you can't make excuses.
It's part of the game, and they were just better.
AUDIENCE: Three, two, one!
[cheers and applause]
PAT: We won the championship at the Celtics in '87.
We blew 'em out.
And we beat 'em in, I think, six games,
but it was like, really, I mean,
we beat 'em by 20, by 20.
It wasn't showtime. It was just--it was greatness.
[cheers and applause]
[upbeat marching band music]
♪ ♪
JAMES: We were hung over on the stage the morning after
expecting to just party some more
and live into the summer and take vacations.
And Pat Riley stands up.
- Pat Riley. [cheers and applause]
- I feel grateful to be part of the team.
I feel grateful to be alive and living in Los Angeles.
And I'm guaranteeing everybody here,
next year, we're gonna win it again.
- What the hell did he just say?
And did he just put that kind of pressure on us?
- Right when we're trying to enjoy winning one,
he's, like, talking about the next one.
Man. Give us a break.
Wow.
PAT: In '71-'72, we won the championship.
We lost the next year.
'79-'80, we won the championship.
We lost the next year.
'82, we won the championship, we lost the next year.
'85 we won it, we lost it.
So every time we win a championship,
we're gonna lose.
So why don't we just go home, you know?
GARY: It hadn't been done in 19 years.
You had to be better than just good.
You had to be better than just great.
There was great teams that couldn't do it.
What was gonna make us do it?
Well, you know, you put the carrot.
- So when I said, "I guarantee you
we're gonna win again next year,"
I wanted them to own their greatness.
And they--they were pissed off.
They--they weren't real happy.
They said, "Coach, could we just exhale
before you put more goals on us?"
I said, "Well, we've exhaled four times, guys.
"And guess what?
"Every year, we came back and lost.
"So I'm gonna make you own your greatness, okay?
We are gonna own it."
[pensive music]
♪ ♪
- Good evening. Today is Black Monday,
the day the Dow dropped
more than 500 points,
more than 22%,
almost double the rate of the beginning
of the crash of 1929.
NEWSCASTER: Channel 2 News has learned exclusively
that the real estate mogul and owner of the Lakers
and the Kings is currently in crucial negotiations
to save his whole empire from possible bank foreclosure.
- So there's some rumors circulating that
Forum sports czar Jerry Buss
has been having some financial problems,
and there was a possibility that he would have
to sell some of his holdings.
- We've learned that the bank is concerned
about payments on more than $100 million in debts.
- I went to my dad, and I said, "What does this mean?"
And he explained what was happening.
There was a big financial crush
on the real estate business,
and it may affect the other businesses
'cause everything's leveraged off each other.
JIM: He leveraged everything.
So if you make a mistake, you're gonna fall hard.
If the loans don't go right, we could...
be forced to sell the Lakers, yeah.
- When your father looks you in the eyes and says,
"We may lose everything," you know it's true. Ha ha.
INTERVIEWER: Are you in any way, shape, or form
in financial trouble?
- No, I am not. I am solvent.
Uh, the Lakers are fine. They're winning.
The Kings are fine. They're winning.
The Lazers are fine. They're winning.
And, uh, where all this is coming about, I don't know.
Uh, somebody claims I borrowed $100 million.
I-I don't know what I did with it.
I'd sure like to see it if I did.
STEVE: Jerry Buss was brilliant,
and he could do a poker face whenever
there were financial problems, but, you know,
he was--he was playing poker with us,
and, uh, he wasn't showing us his cards.
- As a owner, you do not want your players
to worry if their paycheck's gonna bounce
because they'll want to switch teams.
They don't wanna be on the team that's gonna go bankrupt.
- It's the only time I've ever seen him at practice.
He came at, like, 9:30 in the morning
to reassure us that there was no difficulty in his finances
and that everything was running smooth.
I think that's the first time I ever saw him, like,
come close to being pissed off.
- There hasn't been any problems
with any of the team members as far as getting paid
or anything like that.
So, uh, from our, uh, vantage point,
there's nothing irregular going on.
- Since everything has been on time and everybody's, uh,
you know, been happy and the checks are rolling in,
there's no problem with us.
I think we're just gonna continue to play basketball.
LON: I was working as an intern at the time,
and Jerry called me into his office.
And he said, "I know you're reading all the stories.
"I'ma get through it. Don't worry about it.
You're gonna get your paycheck."
It must have been a terrible thing that he was going through
to call little old me in his office, um,
but obviously, he knew others were concerned.
- I feel fine. Uh, I'm somewhat hurt by this.
And, uh, I suppose I've been damaged by it,
but, uh, uh, we'll just let time speak for itself.
- He said, "We gotta cut everything
"that isn't making money.
You know, everything that's a negative cash flow for us."
You know, we eliminated positions,
um, and we, you know, tightened our belts.
JOHNNY: That was his toughest time for sure.
PAT: The pressure was on.
- He was going to do anything he could to keep the Lakers.
JEANIE: He asked me to try to find more events
to put into the arena.
He said, "There's still 250 nights a year
that you've gotta fill up with programming."
LINDA: He'd put pressure on her.
Like, we'd be in meetings with him,
and he would set goals and expectations for us.
JEANIE: At one point, he sent Linda and I to Russia
to negotiate to bring the Leningrad Ice Ballet.
You know, this is the '80s.
This is, like, Reagan and Gorbachev and all that.
And, you know, to send two 20-year-olds into Russia
to negotiate with the government
seemed like kind of like a crazy idea.
LINDA: We ended up booking the Russian circus
and ice ballet, indoor gymnastics, volleyball.
We even did a track and field event.
- My sister was getting involved in events as well.
JANIE: At the time, I was answering phones,
and I didn't look at it as a job.
I--there was something to be done and get it done.
LINDA: We were helping him accomplish
what he needed us to accomplish,
which was more nights filled in the building.
Whatever it took, be creative.
- That time period for my dad was kind of a wakeup call.
And, you know, he realized he couldn't ignore things.
Things wouldn't just go away.
But you know, that's when my dad's relationships
with bankers became so important.
One of those banks was Great Western,
and he came up with the idea of renaming the Forum
the Great Western Forum.
SINGER: ♪ You're a rich girl, and you've gone too far ♪
JEANIE: They paid him a sponsorship fee,
which he could use to help pay off some of the debt.
He sold something that wasn't a tangible asset.
When you sell the name, you didn't sell anything.
So he got value outta something that wasn't even there.
- And it was so simple. It was so simple.
And he goes, "I think it's gonna change sports."
STEVE: The Great Western Forum was one of the first examples
of naming rights, but it was brilliant
because it didn't sound like a corporate name.
It just sounded like a great way to describe a fancy arena.
JEANIE: Something else that he had had
in his mind for several years
was to start his own cable channel.
So he did his research and decided
to create Prime Ticket.
ANNOUNCER: It's Prime Ticket,
a new all-sports television network
that will have Southern California
on the edge of their seats for each
and every power-packed event.
JEANIE: In the early '80s,
you didn't put your home games on television
because if your games were on TV,
people wouldn't buy tickets.
I said, "You know, Dad,
this is gonna hurt our ticket sales."
And he said, "No, Jeanie, you have to think about
how many games do we sell out?" and I said, "All of 'em."
And he said, "Well, that means only 17,505 people
"get to see a home game. By broadcasting the games,
"we increase the size of the Forum,
and everybody who wants to see a game can."
- Stay tuned next for exciting Lakers basketball,
the home opener capacity crowd,
the Lakers against the Cleveland Cavaliers
here on Prime Ticket.
JEANIE: In addition to the money
that you would get paid by the cable operators,
you were able to sell advertising
and bring in more dollars.
- It puts a lot of money in his pocket, I think.
'Cause I didn't hear the rumors about bankruptcy anymore.
PAT: It's the same situation. Move down. Move.
He starts to fight over now.
I help a little bit. I let him in. Okay?
JAMES: Pat Riley stands up and guarantees
to thousands of people that we're gonna do it again.
That statement gave him the right
to get in our face even more
and pull out of us what we didn't have.
KAREEN: He put so much pressure on us to repeat.
I guess if that was wisdom when he did it, but jeez.
MICHAEL: I want to repeat real bad
because there's nothing really left to do but that. [laughs]
[suspenseful music]
SPORTSCASTER: Without a doubt, the Lakers
are the team of the '80s.
They have won four NBA Championships.
That drive for five only four victories away,
and there is another goal for this team.
If they win this one,
they will become the first squad
since the Celtics back in '68 and '69
to win back-to-back NBA Championships.
ANNOUNCER: At guard, Earvin "Magic" Johnson.
PAT: We've been together for eight years.
There is nothing to lose for this team.
The only thing they can lose is a great opportunity,
and the reason that I made the statement is
I wanted everybody to pay attention to the opportunity.
STEVE: Kareem had the greatest quote in the '88 playoffs.
Someone said, "Are you guys gonna repeat?"
And Kareem, who only gave a few words when he had to,
said, "We're the only ones who can."
- '85, '86, '87, Boston, LA, those two teams,
people rank them as, you know,
two of the best teams to ever play.
In '88, we break through,
and now we get
the chance to play the Lakers.
JOHN: You're not really a competitor
if you don't want to go against the best,
if you don't want to prove yourself,
knock them off their boat.
A.C.: We knew they were good.
There was an element of respect
of who we were playing against,
but of course, it still was not the Celtics.
ANNOUNCER: Game one of the finals,
and keep in mind that 70%
of the winners of game one
have gone on to win the championship.
JOHN: When we beat them in game one,
we knew that, you know, they were human.
ISIAH: You know, after game one, you know,
I felt like we were a better team
and could beat the Lakers.
ANNOUNCER: Welcome to game two as the Los Angeles Lakers
try to avenge the first game lost to the Detroit Pistons.
ISIAH: Game two, we're a minute to go in the game.
We get a 24-second violation
against the Lakers,
and the officials somehow give the Lakers back the ball.
ANNOUNCER: It did hit the rim.
ISIAH: That's a momentum killer.
And, you know, they end up winning the game.
JOHN: They beat us in game three,
and that shocked us,
but we got 'em back in four and five.
ISIAH: You know, it puts a lot of pressure on the Lakers now.
Uh, we are up 3-2,
and they have to go home and win two games.
We rolling.
Not only we rolling, but we're--you know,
we're getting ready to deliver the knockout punch.
ANNOUNCER: Isiah Thomas.
- You felt the Lakers really...
teetering, right?
The crowd was, you know... "Oh, shit.
"This team is really good, and they getting
ready to close us out."
And we were on the fast break, and we were doing our thing,
and I stepped on Cooper's foot
and sprained my ankle.
ANNOUNCER: Isiah Thomas is hurt down on the...
- I had--I had never felt pain like that.
[dramatic music]
So I went to the bench and told him
I wanted to try it again and went back into the game,
and I know Magic was on the other side,
but magic happened for me during that stretch.
JOHN: Isiah still hits 43 points,
but Magic wasn't trying to let Isiah win.
MAGIC: He was going off,
and he had one of the best quarters
in NBA Finals history.
But I had a job to do. I don't care who it is.
If my mother out there, I-I'm going to win.
[dramatic music]
ANNOUNCER: Three seconds. They won't have time.
ANNOUNCER: It's over. We go to game seven.
- A lot of people talk about other games being big games.
Uh, I played in it.
I played in game seven in the Forum in 1988.
There's no bigger than that.
- Tonight when we end, the seventh game
comes to a conclusion.
Either the Pistons or the Lakers
will receive the Larry O'Brien Trophy.
The big story that everybody wants to be updated on--
Isiah Thomas. INTERVIEWER: Have you been
able to put any weight on it since Sunday's game?
ISIAH: Uh, I haven't tried.
Tonight would be the first time.
I tried to give it everything I had,
but I just wasn't effective.
- It never crossed my mind that I felt sorry
or anything like that.
It was, "Hey, I gotta win this game."
ANNOUNCER: Lakers will get it. Worthy.
Two Pistons are back.
And the basket's gonna count.
- James dominated in game seven,
and he was doing it from all over the court.
ANNOUNCER: And the Lakers will run again.
MAGIC: One of the greatest game seven performances.
ANNOUNCER: Worthy.
- Man, I love me some James Worthy.
ANNOUNCER: It's 106 to 105.
The Pistons are not gonna get a chance.
The game ends.
The Lakers have won it again.
[cheers and applause]
- It felt really good to win back-to-back.
The goal and the challenge, uh, we put on ourself.
Can we do this again?
- The angels are smiling on us.
First time in a long time it's ever been done.
Who knows? Maybe never again.
A piece of history right here.
- It's a great team to do it for the first time in 19 years.
Just congratulations to the Lakers and the city.
JEANIE: That was a tough year.
We thought we might even lose the team.
So to win was great for all of us.
- Would you like to step up here and guarantee
a third straight to start this off, Coach?
[laughter]
- Now, you guaranteed title number two
for the Lakers last year.
Willing to do that number three?
- I'm out of the prediction business.
[triumphant music]
PERSON: I call him Riles, but you probably call him Pat.
So let's call in Pat Riley.
[cheers and applause]
[Pat speaking indistinctly]
ALL: [chanting] Threepeat! Threepeat!
Threepeat, threepeat, threepeat, threepeat,
threepeat, threepeat...
- Thank you. We'll see you next year.
- Let's do it again next year.
- Three. Repeat.
Three. Repeat.
We love you, LA. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
PERSON: It's party time with the Lakers!
BYRON: We always talk about win as many championships
as we can while we can
'cause this is not gonna last forever.
You know, so I was looking
forward to that next season
trying to get threepeat.
PLAYER: All right. PLAYER: Man, I'm bored.
BYRON: We kind of took threepeat
as our signature for that year.
You know, let's threepeat.
MICHAEL: That was our mission.
That was our mission.
A.C.: The machine was fine-tuned, okay?
PAT: You know, you get to that point with success.
Now, this is seven years into my tenure,
and we had won five titles.
But when you're a professional and you got a job to do,
you know you should know almost innately through experience
what you should and should not do,
what you should allow in and not allow in.
And Byron came and talked to me,
and, uh, when a player comes to me,
I don't know all the things that are really going on,
you know, and, uh, all you can do is listen.
BYRON: I wasn't playing great.
I was up and down more than I probably ever had been.
I was going through some things,
and I asked Pat Riley if I could talk to the team
before the game, and he said, "Yeah."
[apprehensive music]
I told everybody on the team.
I said, "Obviously, it hurt my heart.
"You know, we're bringing home a title
"and, uh, all the stuff that's going on in my neighborhood.
You know, drugs are at an all-time high."
NEWSCASTER: Federal narcotics agents say cocaine
has becomes a drug of choice for millions of Americans.
NEWSCASTER: Drug Enforcement Agents say
a cocaine user should be alarmed by the recent deaths
of sports stars Len Bias and Don Rogers.
- Gang violence is-is-- went rampant.
NEWSCASTER: Police say that drugs and violence
are being spread to other cities
chiefly by two long-standing rivals
in the Los Angeles youth gang scene.
- You know, so for me, it was--it was--you know,
it was really hard to deal with because of the fact
that that's home, you know.
And I'm very close to home, you know.
And my mom and my family still lived in Inglewood.
And I said, "You know, I know there's times,
"you know, these past few weeks where I've been distant.
I've snapped, you know, at guys."
I said, "But my mom's in rehab."
The person that I loved the most,
that meant the world to me,
that meant the most to me was my mom.
And when my mom started taking drugs,
uh, that was the hardest thing I ever had to deal with.
That--that tore me up, you know, 'cause that's my mom.
♪ ♪
- Byron opened up, and I think once he did,
okay, it kind of set him free.
And he had his whole Laker family behind him.
BYRON: All of 'em just came up to me, you know,
as I'm literally here crying,
and they just all--you know, just all gave me a big hug.
And they just like, "B, we--we got you."
And that's probably what I needed more than anything.
- We had gotten to that point that we were really bonded
together and that I think anybody could stand up, and--
and if they had a real issue,
they would listen to that player.
BYRON: You know, we are a family.
I think it goes back to, you know, Dr. Buss.
I think he looked at you as somebody
that was a part of his family if you
wore that purple and gold.
You know, and he had my back by telling me,
"Listen, we got you.
Uh, anything you need, if you need time."
And I told him, I said, "The last thing I need is time.
[laughs] "Last thing I need is to be away from the team,
"you know, at my house, chilling,
"and then going to these meetings,
and then coming back home."
I said, "That's the last thing I need is idle time."
You know, I wanted to play, and, um, he allowed me to play.
♪ ♪
GARY: The true test of one's character
and the character of a team
is when things are going badly,
not when everything is going great.
You know, the family issues that Byron had with his mom
and the rumors about Dr. Buss
and the financial situation, all of those things
have a psychological load on the team,
and we were able to persevere and work through all that.
- Come on, Gar. I got $10 on there.
Bet it again. Bet it again. - Bet it. Bet 10.
PERSON: Welcome back, MVP.
PLAYER: You owe me 10 now.
MICHAEL: When things get tough and things get hard,
families, teams don't break apart.
They start coming together.
We stayed together. We stuck together.
PLAYER: How much, Cooper?
A.C.: Going into the season
and as we went throughout the season,
you felt confident.
And then playoffs came.
PAT: We swept, you know. [laughs]
We just went back-to-back,
and we swept the first three rounds.
We were 11 and 0.
A.C.: Hot knife going through better.
It couldn't have been dialed up any better.
Until... [laughs]
♪ ♪
PAT: We had nine days off.
A.C.: We're waiting on the finals.
BYRON: Pat Riley was not going to allow us to just roam
around Los Angeles, get outta shape.
So he took us to Santa Barbara.
PAT: You know, we're now going for three in a row,
and when you're a professional athlete
and you're highly conditioned,
their bodies are ready to play 40 minutes
every 48 hours.
They're trained.
You give a team a week off, they're not gonna--
they're gonna lose their conditioning.
BYRON: Our practices were so competitive.
I've never seen it this bad.
And I don't know how much more my body can take.
It was like a dog fight every day.
This is pure torture. - My body is killing me.
A.C.: We practice harder than most people played in a game.
That's just how it was.
- Be quick now. Be quick. Come on, folks. Be quick.
Be quick now.
After we won back-to-back titles,
I simply became more and more intense.
I became more and more desperate
'cause I wanted this to continue
to continue to continue.
GARY: Pat really, you know,
he really pushed it to the point
where they coined a nickname for him, um,
where they started calling him Norman Bates.
[menacing music] - [screams]
KAREEM: It was like the Bates Motel, you know,
You go into practice, we wouldn't come out. Ha ha ha.
PAT: That's just the way I was.
Practice, practice, practice, man.
Practice, practice, practice.
We arrive in Detroit.
Go over to the stadium to just get a little sweat.
[uneasy music]
♪ ♪
The very last minute of that practice in Detroit,
I'm looking at my blue card stock,
and I'm saying, "Well, I gotta cover one more thing."
They're a great rebounding team,
so let's just do a-- a dummy block-out drill.
- Ball goes up, David Rivers,
he's a rookie point guard who's guarding me.
I go up to get the rebound.
He kind of bends over,
I come over his back, and I hear pop in my leg.
And when I heard the pop and felt the pain,
I knew I was done.
- Don't remember hearing it pop
but I just remember, um,
realizing that he couldn't run.
You know, that was-- that was it.
You know, that was like--
BRENT MUSBURGER: Good evening, everybody, and welcome.
I'm Brent Musburger.
Unfortunately, the Lakers are gonna be
without one of their stars.
Byron Scott, during a drill yesterday,
a contact drill, popped a hamstring.
- In the first game, we get beat.
ANNOUNCER: But game one goes to Detroit.
The final score, Pistons 109 Lakers 97.
- And then in the second game in the third quarter,
uh, Magic's hamstring goes on him.
- Pick and roll, Mychal Thompson.
Blocked. Salley again.
Aguirre from Thomas.
And we have our first tie of the game,
and Magic Johnson may have pulled a hamstring.
- And there it is.
ANNOUNCER: The Detroit Pistons are within two games
of winning their first championship.
ISIAH: Injuries are part of the game,
but they had no feelings for me the year before.
So they were all meat,
and I was gonna eat 'em.
ANNOUNCER: Detroit has a commanding 3-0 lead
in the NBA finals.
World Champs.
ISIAH: We should have won in '88, but in '89,
they had zero shot of beating us.
Zero.
We beat the shit out of 'em.
- I know Isiah will probably say they still win,
but I-I beg to differ.
I think with our full roster, we win that series.
But Santa Barbara was probably just a tad too much, you know.
But at the time, we were all for it because we understood,
"Let's get away and refocus."
You know, hindsight is 20-20.
When you look back, yeah, it was too much.
- I'm gonna take a guess
that, in retrospect,
he probably looked at that and said,
"If I had to do it over again, I would not do that."
I'm gonna take a wild guess and say it.
And then again, Pat Riley, he might say, "Bullshit."
He might say, "I was doing my job."
So it'd be interesting to see.
- When I go back and think about it,
I can go right now back and look at my notes
and my practice plans.
And as bad as people say I pushed 'em,
I didn't push 'em that hard.
But that definitely was the beginning--
was the beginning of the end for me, you know.
Yeah. Yeah.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪