Lakers’ playboy owner passes away

LOS ANGELES - Jerry Buss, the Los Angeles Lakers’ playboy owner who shepherded the NBA franchise to 10 championships from the ’80s Showtime dynasty to the Kobe Bryant era, died Monday, his assistant said.

He died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, said Bob Steiner, his assistant. Buss was 80.

He’d been hospitalized for cancer, but the immediate cause of death was kidney failure, Steiner said.

Under Buss’ leadership since 1979, the Lakers became Southern California’s most beloved sports franchise and a worldwide extension of Hollywood glamour. Buss acquired, nurtured and befriended a staggering array of talented players and basketball minds during his Hall of Fame tenure.

Few owners in sports history can even approach Buss’ accomplishments with the Lakers, who made the NBA finals 16 times through 2011 during his 32 years in charge, winning 10 titles between 1980 and 2010. The Lakers easily are the NBA’s winningest franchise since he bought the club.

Few owners have ever been more beloved by their players than Buss, who always referred to the Lakers as his extended family. Working with front-office executives Jerry West and Mitch Kupchak, Buss spent lavishly to win his titles despite lacking a huge personal fortune, often running the NBA’s highest payroll while also paying high-profile coaches Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.

Always an innovative businessman, Buss paid for the Lakers through both their wild success and his own groundbreaking moves to raise revenue. He co-founded a basic-cable sports television network and sold the naming rights to the Forum at times when both now-standard strategies were unusual, adding justification for his induction into the Pro Basketball Hall of Fame in 2010.

Although Buss was proudest of his two hands full of NBA title rings, he also was a scholar, Renaissance man and bon vivant who epitomized California cool for his entire public life.

The father of six rarely appeared in public without at least one attractive, much younger woman on his arm at USC football games, boxing matches, poker tournaments - and, of course, Lakers games from his private box at Staples Center, which was built under his watch.

Buss earned a Ph.D. in chemistry at age 24 and had careers in aerospace and real estate development before getting into sports. With money largely from his Santa Monica real-estate ventures, Buss bought the then-struggling Lakers, the NHL’s Los Angeles Kings and both clubs’ arena - the Forum - from Jack Kent Cooke in a $67.5 million deal that was the largest sports transaction in history at the time.

In January 2011, Forbes estimated the Lakers were worth $643 million - the second-most valuable NBA franchise. AP