You really do need to say you're sorry, after all; you have to admit you've been quite the fool for piping up without knowing any better.
At the very least it would be the grown-up thing to do, wishing him well at: jim.buss@lakers.com.And while I look for an appropriate place where the Jim Buss statue might stand at Staples Center, you might want to ponder how you could have been so wrong about somebody.
You never met him, may never have seen him, and yet most of you were certain he was a dunce.
Most of you couldn't get past the baseball cap glued to his head and the stringy long hair beneath it, as if looking clueless means you really are.
Admit it, you gave up on the Lakers early because of the baseball cap.
I did as well. I thought the Clippers would be better. I thought Jerry's kid was too quick to dump Lamar Odom, figuring he was just trying to save some of his inheritance money.
But now we all know the baseball cap is clairvoyant. How he knew, I don't know, but obviously he had Lamar pegged as an emotional gob of goo before anyone else.
My guess is he was the only one watching the Kardashians.
Or maybe he understood Odom would not be the same in-great-shape player he had been a year earlier after using the off-season to play for the U.S. national team.
Whatever, Jerry's kid got it right.
Maybe Odom doesn't curl into a ball if his name isn't mentioned in trade talks. But then how many of you would have been criticizing the baseball cap for failing to make any attempt to improve the team?
He thought he had Chris Paul and still most of you folks were piling on. You thought he was just a good-for-nothing rich kid, and yet he had done everything he could to land Paul.
As Lakers fans became increasingly restless, there was no doubt in the minds of many Pau Gasol was going to be traded. Or had to be traded.
But the baseball cap kept him.
He's really been the only guy in Andrew Bynum's corner from day one, and yet he did his job. He looked into a trade that might have brought Dwight Howard here.
But early on Howard let the Lakers know he had no interest in playing for a team where he wasn't the top player. Jerry's kid moved on while everyone else still guessed a deal might be made.
One columnist suggested trading both Gasol and Bynum for Howard. And Jerry's kid is the one who has no idea what he's doing?
