Heisler: Dear Jim and Jeanie Buss: How do you like your new $4 billion (awful) team?

Jeanie Buss
Jim Buss
Toyota Sports Center
555 Nash St.
El Segundo, Calif., 90245

Dear Jeanie and Jimbo,

I know, it’s quiet around the Lakers facility these days, a l-o-n-g way from Sterling World Plaza in Beverly Hills, AKA, the Heart of Darkness, or, actually, in this case, Madness.

I understand it’s been a hard time. You’re choosing a coach and it’s barely discussed. Of course, even if the Sterlings would stop duking it out in the press and leave you a little space, it still wouldn’t be on anyone’s mind, knowing that the Big Turnaround won’t be next season but (hopefully) in 2015 or (it is coming some time, isn’t it?) in 2016.

I know I’ve been derelict, myself, but after 25 years of chronicling Donald and writing open letters to him, I couldn’t let him go away wondering what I would have counseled if I was still in touch. Not that he was ever going to do one thing that I or anyone else suggested, but it’s fun to note the obvious answer and see what he does, instead.

I’ve got good news and bad. Which do you want first?

Oh, no, it’s not THAT bad. Kobe Bryant is OK. I know he only played six games after you gave him that $48.5 million two-year extension, but as far as I know, he’ll actually play next season, even if he’ll turn 36 between now and then.

Let’s do the good news first. You remember how rich you used to be?

You’re twice as rich now!

If the Clippers sell for $2 billion after Forbes valued them at $575 million six months ago, what are the Lakers, valued six months ago at $1.35 billion, worth? Is it $3 billion? $4 billion?

You guys actually have a $3 billion, 20-year cable deal ($150 million per) up and running. Steve Ballmer—I’m assuming he’ll buy the team from the NBA if the league winds up taking over–presumably offered crazy money in part because the Clippers’ current cable deal will soon run out, offering the prospect of harvesting billions in the new deal.

Wait ‘til Ballmer finds out he’s arriving in the midst of a fans’ revolt. The new Dodger owners paid an ungodly $2 billion—well, it seemed ungodly at the time—assuming they could get it back from cable TV.

Indeed, Time Warner bankrolled them to the tune of $8.4 billion over 25 years, or $336 million a season, more than twice as much as the Lakers are getting because they play twice as many games.

Unfortunately, most of the big carriers–Cox, Charter, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-verse, DirecTV, Dish — refused Time Warner’s price hike, leaving the Dodgers blacked out on 70% of local TVs.

The same thing happened to you guys, of course, in 2012 when your new deal with Time Warner kicked in. The price was hiked. The big companies refused to pay. The exhibition season was blacked out through most of the area, and the regular season… all the way up to Nov. 15, just over two weeks into it.

At that point, the hue and cry from Laker fans led DirecTV to make a deal, followed by all the other companies.

Remember when the Dodgers owned Southern California, with the community clearing ground for a palace on a hill overlooking downtown, even if it had to evict the people who lived there, while the Lakers arrived like an orphan left on the doorstep, dropped off by owner Bob Short, who went back to his day job in trucking in the Twin Cities?

Those days are over. As veteran Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke put it flatly: “The Dodgers are not as big as the Lakers, and the Dodgers fans are not the Lakers fans, who lost their minds and used their wallets and essentially forced the pay-TV operators to carry the channel after only a few missed games. There is no such mass fleeing from the likes of DirecTV.

“The onus is now on Time Warner Cable to sell what is essentially an overpriced product.”

Actually, y’all are a little pricey at the moment, yourselves, seeing as how everyone who’s not in Sterling-level denial knows this is an ongoing down time with no big free agents on the market—and none who’d be interested in you in any case—and the No. 7 pick in a much-hyped-but-not-lately draft.

Nevertheless, you have prospects. You’ll have real money and there will really be big-time free agents on the market, starting with Kevin Love, if he’s not traded this year, in 2015, and continuing on to possibly include K-K-Kevin Durant in 2016.

Oh, right, the bad news: L.A. may not be all yours as it has been.

If Sterling isn’t going to be involved—which is how I’d bet—the Clippers won’t inevitably founder.

If he hadn’t said Those Things to V., and the Clippers had lost in the second round to OKC, dopey whistles or no dopey whistles, Donnie would have started mewing at Doc Rivers, telling him about lineup changes Donald’s friends thought he should consider and high-priced guys to unload, like maybe that DeAndre Jordan, who doesn’t score a lot for a guy who’ll make $11.4 million.

Doc would have have endured it for a season or two but, barring a breakthrough into the Finals or an actual title, that would have pretty much done it.

Now the Clippers are’t going away. With Steve Ballmer they may have ownership as lucid as yours.

Oh, right, I know what your fans are saying, you guys haven’t been that lucid lately. The ingrates.

So hang in there. If worse comes to worse, you won’t just be rich, but richer than you were going to be!

Hey, there’s always something to be thankful for, if you look hard enough.

Best regards,

Mark

Hall of Fame writer Mark Heisler is a founding member and regular contributor to SheridanHoops, the Orange County Register and Forbes.com.  Follow him on Twitter.

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