Lakers: Hulu's "Legacy" Concludes By Recounting The Tragedies And Triumphs Of An Eventful 2019-20 Season
The 10-episode documentary series "Legacy: The True Story Of The L.A. Lakers," helmed by "Training Day" director Antoine Fuqua and executive produced by Lakers owner Jeanie Buss, recently wrapped up its run, airing an excellent concluding episode that covers the latest chapter in the Los Angeles Lakers saga: the LeBron James era.
As it opens up, the final episode of "Legacy" tracks the 2018 recruitment of free agent James by the team's then-top executive, president Magic Johnson. Through both new footage and an archived "Jimmy Kimmel Live" interview, the Hall of Fame point guard details his recruitment process down to the minute, recalling how he arrived an hour early and just sat, parked, in his car outside James's gate before buzzing in.
"The day I signed [with L.A.], Kobe [Bryant] said, 'You family now. Whatever you need from me, I'm a call away,'" James reflects in the documentary. "Kobe definitely gave me that love."
"The one promise I gave her, is that we will get this organization and this franchise back where it belongs." James said of Jeanie Buss. It's clear that James definitely seems to get along with Jeanie Buss much, much better than he has with any previous franchise owner. James famously had a somewhat bumpy relationship with Cleveland Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert. Miami Heat owner Micky Arison always seemed to enjoy a fairly cordial, professional relationship with The Chosen One, but it never seemed to this writer like they had much of a friendship. James actively seems to get along with Jeanie Buss, one of the most well-liked owners in the NBA.
As is custom for the Lakers, a former family member, Luke Walton, had been brought into the fold as the head coach at the time of LBJ's arrival. During that first 2018-19 season, James was playing alongside plenty of young talent, including Lonzo Ball, Brandon Ingram, Josh Hart, Ivica Zubac, Kyle Kuzma, and Alex Caruso.
Some solid veterans who would eventually help James win a title in L.A. were in place on that 2018-19 team, including Rajon Rondo, Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and JaVale McGee. "[In] 2018, I just wanted to be in a situation where I would have some type of influence," Rondo says in new interview footage. "I knew I would be coming in as a mentor as well."
When the Lakers faced off against the Kevin Durant-era Golden State Warriors in a marquee Christmas Day 2018 matchup, the club suffered two season- and team-altering injuries. James suffered a major groin injury, at the time the "most serious" of his career, Ramona Shelburne of ESPN comments now. Rondo also got hurt in that game, suffering a finger injury that would keep him unavailable for 4-5 weeks. During new interview footage, Jeanie Buss refers to James and Rondo as the team's "two stabilizing factors." The team had been ranked fourth in the Western Conference when the two vets went down, but quickly plummeted down the standings without them.
"That's kind of where it turned to just complete chaos for the rest of that season," Walton says now.
Parallel to the on-court drama, there were some interesting off-court developments for the Buss family around this time as well. We delve into the newly discovered eldest Buss sibling, circa December 2018, Lee Klose, who had been given up for adoption as an infant by a then-cash strapped Jerry and JoAnn Buss. We delve more into Lee's relationship with her parents and siblings here.
Meanwhile, on the hardwood, the Lakers fell out of the playoff hunt. Magic Johnson would quit his gig as the team's front office leader during the final contest of the 2018-19 season, having grown irked by not being permitted to fire Luke Walton. Ironically, Walton was eventually let go later that summer.
On the Buss family side of the equation, Lee (whose birth name was Marie Buss) recalls meeting Jeanie for the first time, at an airport in Las Vegas, after their mother, JoAnn, takes a fall and seems to be in bad shape. They headed straight to the hospital for Lee's reunion with her birth mother. "She wasn't articulate but she was very alert."
"I think that my mom longed for [Lee, who had been named Marie by Jerry and JoAnn] her whole life. In the adoption papers, my mom had stated that she was abiding by her husband's wishes," Jeanie says.
"My birth father wrote, 'He had neither the time nor the finances to think of raising a child.' I looked at that and thought, 'You were educated, you were married. Why did you give me away?'" Lee notes, sadly.
"In 1953, they were extremely broke," Johnny Buss says now. "And I just don't think they had the wherewithal or the means to raise a child at that time."
"It was important to my dad that he did not bring a child into a circumstance that he grew up with," Jeanie explains.
"I realized, 'You need to forgive your parents. The way they felt at that moment they gave you away might not have been the way they felt later on. Once I understood it, it was a decision made in a moment, I could let go," Lee recalls.
Ball, Ingram and Hart, plus several draft picks, would be flipped in the summer for New Orleans Pelicans All-Star big man Anthony Davis. With Walton canned, the Lakers tried to hire Tyronn Lue, now with the L.A. Clippers, or Monty Williams, the reigning 2022 Coach of the Year with the Phoenix Suns, for their head coaching vacancy. The documentary does not really explore the almost-hiring of either coach, instead just exploring the team's eventual third choice, the defensive-oriented Frank Vogel.
"In order to get a great talent like Anthony Davis, you have to give up great talent. And ultimately it was my decision to push the button," Jeanie notes. Did L.A. ultimately surrender too much future draft equity to the New Orleans Pelicans for Davis? Possibly, but they did win it all, and that's more than most teams can say after a blockbuster trade.
"Me and 'Bron go way back to '15, '16, I was going to LeBron's camps," Anthony Davis says now. Davis also had gotten to know James and another legendary Laker, Kobe Bryant, while playing for Team U.S.A. during the 2012 Olympics. "As soon as we get to London, Kobe tells my dad, 'I got your son, he's in good hands.'"
"Wherever we see Kobe, AD was with him," James notes of the duo's relationship during that summer.
The documentary then gets heavy. After getting off to a terrific start in 2019-20, the Lakers faced two major tragic disruptions to their eventual championship season. First, the tragic passing of Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others in a January 2020 helicopter crash one foggy Calabasas morning. Several Lakers reflected on how they heard the news, and how they grappled with it in the ensuing months.
The second tragedy, of course, was the terrifying airborne pandemic that has now claimed tens of millions of lives the world over. COVID-19 compelled all major sports leagues to halt games in mid-March 2020.
"I went home and I just hand some time to really grieve for Kobe and that situation," Lakers reserve center Dwight Howard says.
"Part of me was thinking [about] the health and safety of everybody. But human nature also was thinking, 'F***, [we could lose] our momentum," James acknowledges candidly.
"I've never felt so isolated as I did during the shutdown," Jeanie Buss remarks (right there with ya, Jeanie).
In a happier turn, talk turns to the Orlando "bubble" season restart during the summer of 2020. "[At the] end of April, we started this idea of a bubble, this safe haven where the NBA could quarantine the players and do daily testing," Jeanie Buss explains.
"The murder of George Floyd really underlined something to all Americans that they maybe had tried not to be aware of and now all of a sudden they saw it in a way that they can't deny that it exists," Lakers legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar states in interview footage for "Legacy."
"We were extremely happy and proud to be able to highlight a moment that we felt... was going to last longer than just that time," James says of the NBA and player's decision to directly address the Black Lives Matter movement. "The same thing happened with the Jacob Blake [shooting]," James notes.
The WNBA and the NBA both decided to not play after news had broken about Blake's life-altering injury at the hands of Kenosha, Wisconsin police officers that summer. Games were postponed. A league-wide meeting was held, where players discussed whether or not they would resume play.
"To be honest, we were ready to leave," Davis says.
"I was a guy that was split," James reveals, given that L.A. seemed prime for a potential title run at the time.
Several future Hall of Famers got on the line with America's 44th president, Barack Obama, to discuss concrete political requests they could make.
"There's myself, [Chris Paul], [current teammate Russell Westbrook], [former Laker] Carmelo [Anthony], and [then-Lakers assistant coach] Jason Kidd" on the call, James reveals. "More than anything, he basically told us we can't come out of this with nothing."
NBA and WNBA players agreed to resume play, releasing a multi-point plan with guidance from Obama and other politicians they consulted. The NBA's owners agreed to fight against voter suppression in the U.S., and would go on to open up their arenas in 2020 to be used as voting and polling stations.
"I knew it was our time, we knew it was our time," Davis says of the team's postseason run.
During the Lakers' Western Conference Finals series against Nikola Jokic and the Denver Nuggets, the documentary discusses AD's buzzer-beating, Game 2-winning trey that would put the Lakers up 2-0 in the series, off an inbounds pass from Rajon Rondo. L.A. would go on to win the series 4-1.
"The Lakers were going head-to-head against [former Showtime head coach] Pat Riley," Jeanie Buss notes. "It made it a little bittersweet. I felt gratitude of what Pat taught me and the experience that I had while he was the coach of the Lakers."
"I already knew how hard it was gonna be," James says of the experience. "If [there were] gonna be two teams that was gonna be locked in [during] the bubble, it was gonna be my team and it was gonna be Riles'." James, of course, signed with the Heat as a free agent in 2010. The "Heatles," a Big Three that included James and his fellow 2003 draftees Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, would appear in four consecutive NBA Finals from 2011-2014, winning twice. James left for Cleveland in 2014, and of course joined L.A. in 2018.
The Lakers won their first two games in the 2020 Finals, with Jeanie Buss in attendance. A Herculean effort from Heat All-Star swingman Jimmy Butler helped Miami win Game 3. The Lakers secured a Game 4 victory to go up 3-1 in the series. L.A. players wore their Kobe Bryant-themed jerseys for what they thought would be an easy Game 5 win to end the series. But that was the night that Jimmy Butler went insane. Playing 47:12 minutes in regulation, the All-NBA small forward went 11-of-19 from the floor for 35 points, and notched a triple-double with 12 rebounds and 11 assists. He also had five steals and a block. Miami would go on to just barely eke out a 111-108 victory, moving the series record to 3-2.
"LeBron was on a mission, you could see it," Buss said of King James in that run.
James logged a triple-double of his own in the series-clinching Game 6, scoring 28 points on 13-of-20 shooting, pulling down 14 rebounds, and dishing out 10 assists. The eventual 2020 Finals MVP also chipped in a steal. Davis scored 19 points on 7-of-17 shooting and grabbed 15 boards. He also logged three assists, two blocks and a steal.
The team dedicated the win to the memories of Kobe and Gianna Bryant.
"Legacy" wraps up with several Lakers legends taking a cumulative appraisal of all that's been achieved since Dr. Buss first purchased the team in 1979.
"This is the greatest franchise in NBA history, point blank. You gotta start with great leadership -- Dr. Buss and Jeanie Buss -- and superstars on that court," Magic Johnson offers.
"If you look at those retired jerseys up there, I don't think another franchise in all of basketball has had numbers up there like those numbers," former L.A. superstar guard and GM Jerry West notes.
"The legacy here is winning 17 championships," current superstar Davis states simply.
"It's important to me to finish what [Dr. Buss] started, which was to have the most championships in the NBA. We are now tied with the Celtics. I gotta get number 18 before they do," Jeanie chuckles.
