At least publicly, Los Angeles Lakers team president Jeanie Buss isn't as irate that her brother didn't try to persuade her fiancé to return to the team this time around.
In an interview with Time Warner Cable SportsNet, home of the Los Angeles Lakers broadcasts, Buss said the organization - meaning her brother Jim Buss and general manager Mitch Kupchak - never made a counteroffer to Jackson after the New York Knicks began serious discussions about his involvement there.
LakersNation tweeted quotes from Buss via the TWC SportsNet interview:
“It was clear that Phil wanted to go back to work, but there was no role for him with the Lakers” - Jeanie Buss (via @TWCSportsNet)
— Lakers Nation (@LakersNation) March 19, 2014
"He was not offered any official position” - Jeanie Buss on Phil Jackson (via @TWCSportsNet) — Lakers Nation (@LakersNation) March 19, 2014
"The family’s going to own the team as long as the family is together” - Jeanie Buss (via @TWCSportsNet)
— Lakers Nation (@LakersNation) March 19, 2014
The tone was quite different from her confession from her memoir, "Laker Girl."
In September, Jeanie Buss said she felt "betrayed" by her brother when he passed over Jackson to hire Mike D'Antoni to replace Mike Brown as Lakers coach five games into the 2012-13 season.
As jocksandstilettojill.com reported in September from "Laker Girl:"
The sequence of events - Phil almost coming back and then being told someone else was better for the job - practically destroyed me. It almost took away my passion for this job and this game. It felt like I had been stabbed in the back. It was a betrayal. I was devastated.
I felt that I got played. Why did they have to do that? Why did Jim pull Phil back into the mix if he wasn't sincere about it? . . .
Phil wasn't looking for the job, and then he wasted 36 hours of his life preparing for it when they were never in a million years going to hire him anyway.
How do you do that to your sister? How do you do that to Phil Jackson?"
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