Los Angeles Lakers owner Jeanie Buss says the media reported “fake news” about her team’s failed attempt to acquire Anthony Davis prior to the NBA trade deadline last month.
Buss insists it’s simply not true that the Lakers were willing to give up their “entire roster for a certain player.”
Buss says the rumors damaged team chemistry.
Per ESPN:
“There’s always a love-hate relationship with the media when you’re on this side of the business,” Buss said during one of the multiple panel discussions that she took part in at the MIT/Sloan Analytics Conference in Boston on Saturday. “The media, for example, there was a lot of hype and things written about a potential trade leading into the trade deadline — all of it false. But it got a lot of coverage.
“There’s damage that’s done to team chemistry when players have to read about all this — that is, to me, it’s irresponsible and frustrating because it puts feelings that your players have [at risk] and you can’t avoid it. It’s part of the landscape that we deal with.”
On a different panel discussion, Buss also said, in part, “The biggest challenge for [us is] the ‘fake news’ about how we were supposedly trading our entire roster for a certain player, which is completely not true. But those stories leak out and it hurt our young players. It wasn’t fair. [Lakers president Magic Johnson] got in front of that, and I think we’re back on the right track. Hopefully, that will allow us to make a playoff push coming up here.”
Los Angeles offered a package to New Orleans that included Josh Hart, Ivica Zubac, Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Lonzo Ball and two first-round picks, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. It is unclear if there were any reports that the team was, indeed, going to trade its entire roster for Davis.
“On my side, it seems like there’s more things written and put out there that have no backup, nobody’s name associated with the story or the quote, and an unnamed source. It’s frustrating,” Buss said at the conference in describing the current sports media landscape. “I would rather see that not happen. I would rather see more responsibility with the media and maybe just taking it back a little bit to think about who it’s affecting when they do write lies and conjecture and made-up stuff just to get clicks and followers. It’s really not right.”
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