Phil Jackson wasn’t busy coaching the Lakers again on Christmas. Instead, he was proposing marriage to Jeanie Buss, daughter of Lakers owner Jerry Buss.
Jeanie accepted — as she showed Thursday from her @JeanieBuss Twitter account with a photo of the diamond ring on her left ring finger and the statement: “Twitter family – Phil finally gave me that ring I wanted!”
Jeanie Buss, executive vice president of business operations for the Lakers, began dating Jackson right at the start of his first training camp as Lakers head coach in 1999. Buss, 51, had said often she never expected Jackson, married twice previously, to want to wed again. He came around, after all.
The engagement makes even stranger the Lakers’ awkward coaching search in November, when Buss was crushed that her father and brother Jim decided along with Lakers general manager Mitch Kupchak that they’d rather hire Mike D’Antoni instead of waiting to determine if Jackson would’ve accepted a third go-around as Lakers head coach.
So Jackson, 67, wasn’t coaching the Lakers against the Knicks on Christmas, but he was getting much closer to the Laker family. No wedding date has been set.
Buss wrote in her book “Laker Girl” in 2010 about Jackson’s impending exit as Lakers coach: “I know Phil and I are never going to be married. I don’t think I’ll ever be married again. Phil is planning to leave the Lakers at the end of next season and that means he will probably have to leave me as well. I know I cannot move to his retirement home in Montana, nor do I see him staying in a big city like Los Angeles. I am a working girl and the Lakers are my employer, which means my life is here.”
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Phil Jackson, Jeanie Buss: engaged to be married is a post from: Lakers blog
