Lakers: A New Buss Arrives For The "Legacy" Finale On Hulu
The brand-new, 10-part Los Angeles Lakers documentary "Legacy: The True Story Of The L.A. Lakers" just wrapped up its run on Hulu. Directed by Antoine Fuqua and executive produced by Jeanie Buss, the extensive limited series takes an in-depth look at the team, covering its entire run while owned by the Buss family.
"Legacy" manages to dive deeper into the Buss family drama than this writer was even expecting Jeanie Buss to let it, while finding a fun way to balance that more personal story with the bigger arcs of the Lakers' many, many championship runs.
In the conclusive tenth episode, 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 Jerry and JoAnn Buss, parents to Jeanie, Jimmy, Johnny and Janie. Dr. Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in 1979 and oversaw 10 title teams while he owned the club. When he passed, Jeanie inherited the title of controlling governor.
"She was able to get her birth certificate and she sent copies of that," Jeanie Buss relays now. "So I immediately recognized my father's and mother's signatures. She sent copies of pictures of her. She looked just like my mom. I remembered my mom told me a story about how she and my father had a child before [eldest son] Johnny was born and they gave her up for adoption,"
"It blew my mind that he never mentioned [it]," Jim Buss says now.
"All I can think of is that I want my mom to meet Lee," Jeanie notes in fresh footage of her mentality at the time. "Lee coming to the family gives us an opportunity to connect in a different way. She looks at Johnny and Jimmy without all the weight of the things that have happened in this family. So it made me see them with fresh eyes and a blank slate."
It seems that Lee meeting her younger birth siblings has enabled all of them to view each other in a kinder light, despite some residual bitterness over the handling of the franchise following Dr. Buss's 2013 passing.
"With Lee, knowing her strength of forgiving her parents [for putting her up for adoption] should be a calling to us that forgiveness is a good thing," Johnny remarks now. "Jeanie has done an incredible job [in running the Lakers]. And where she has excelled most is when she follows my father's plan, and Jeanie is doing that right now. I'm very proud of her for doing that... I don't think I was as sensitive to Jeanie's hurt as I should have been. That period of time in 2017 [when Johnny and Jimmy tried to force Jeanie to step down as team governor] is just, you know, is over. And it's not worth it."
"Jeanie's very good at putting the pieces together," Jimmy observes in his own interview. "I mean she's worked with my dad for, you know, 25 or 30 years or whatever it is, she knows what she's doing.... The regret is that I just don't... I can't walk in and say hi... I feel that I'm going to reach out to her fairly soon to [say], 'Hey, let's just sit down and talk this out, put it behind us in a positive way.'"
"Knowing that they understand now that why I had to do what I had to do that now opens the door for the kind of relationship that I'd like to have with my brothers," Jeanie says.
