Magic Johnson, with fellow Dodgers owner Mark Walter, is among the people that think Lakers owner and executive Jim Buss could use help running the team. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times / January 15, 2014)
By Mike James
January 15, 2014, 5:05 p.m.
Magic Johnson has never been reluctant to give his opinion on how the Lakers are playing, and Wednesday he said the problems on the court can be traced to the owner’s office.
Johnson, whose Hall of Fame playing career included five NBA titles in his 13 seasons with the Lakers, says owner Jim Buss needs to take a few pages from the book written by his father Jerry Buss, who made the Lakers one of the most successful and entertaining franchises in professional sports.
“This is what happens when you make the wrong decisions, two coaching wrong decisions, giving Steve Nash that deal, it’s backfired,” Johnson said during a meeting at The Times between Dodgers officials and Times writers and editors. Johnson is a part owner of the Dodgers.
“The biggest problem they’re going to have right now … you’ve got to get a guy like Jerry West to be the face of the team. ...
“You’ve got to have someone helping Jim. He’s got to quit trying to prove a point to everybody that he can do it on his own, get his ego out of it, and just say, ‘Let me get someone beside me to help achieve the goals I want.' "
Johnson acknowledged that getting West to return would be difficult, but added that having an empowered person in the general manager's role is critical. “You need to get someone like Jerry to be the face, so agents are comfortable, players are comfortable, knowing the Lakers are going for a championship….
“Look what Pat Riley did in Miami,” referring to the former Lakers coach who assembled the current team featuring LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.
“If Pat Riley’s not there, you don’t get LeBron to buy in.”
Johnson said that current Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak is doing a good job. “Mitch is great,” he said, “but he doesn’t have the power.”
Johnson also added, “Everybody’s telling me free agents don’t want to sign [with the Lakers]…. They’re looking at the Lakers now as a team that’s dysfunctional; who’s their leader, who’s the guy?”
The Lakers (14-24) are in one of the worst slumps in franchise history. They have lost 11 of their last 12 games and have fewer victories than all but two teams in the Western Conference.
“Dr. Buss was smart,” Johnson said. “He said, ‘I’m going to get the best dude, Jerry West, and he helped me achieve my goals. Then I went and got the best coach [in Phil Jackson]. He wanted to work with the best.”
West, general manager of the Lakers from 1982 to 2000, is a consultant with the Golden State Warriors.
To be sure, injuries have played a significant role in the Lakers’ woes. Kobe Bryant, Nash, Steve Blake, Jordan Farmar and Xavier Henry are all out now. As for Bryant, Johnson said there should be no rush to return to the court even after his broken knee has healed. Should he sit out the remainder of the season? “He’s got to,” Johnson said. “What is he coming back to? He’s not going to be able to stop the pick and roll, all the layups the Lakers are giving up.
“He’s been hurt twice, give him the whole year to get healthy.”
Dodgers near TV rights deal with Time Warner Cable
Time Warner Cable could pay the Dodgers $7 billion to $8 billion over the 20-year deal. It's a blow to Fox Sports, the team's current broadcaster.
January 23, 2013|By Joe Flint and Bill Shaikin, Los Angeles Times
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The Dodgers' new TV deal would help cover its recent spending spree,… (Gary Friedman, Los Angeles…)
The Los Angeles Dodgers have negotiated a long-term television deal that would pay the team $7 billion to $8 billion, a move that would help cover its recent spending spree and quiet critics who scoffed at the record $2.15-billion purchase price paid by the new owner, Guggenheim Partners.
The expected 20-year agreement with Time Warner Cable could be announced this week, according to people familiar with the matter. They asked that their names not be used because the deal has not yet closed.
The arrangement is bad news for rival News Corp's Fox Sports unit, whose channel Prime Ticket holds cable TV rights to the Dodgers through the upcoming season. Fox will pay $39 million this season — a fraction of what Time Warner Cable would pay under the new contract — and found the proposed price tag too high, people inside News Corp. said.
And the pact would probably mean bigger pay TV bills — even for those who don't watch Dodgers baseball, potentially leading to a backlash against the team and Time Warner Cable.
Under the terms of the proposed contract, Guggenheim would own a Dodgers-dedicated television channel that would start carrying games in 2014, said the people with knowledge of the pact. Time Warner Cable would manage much of the channel's operations and handle distribution to other pay TV companies, including DirecTV and Cox Cable.
The Dodgers' move to control their own channel is driven in part by a desire to pocket as much money as possible while still abiding by Major League Baseball's revenue-sharing agreement — which requires that 34% of each team's locally generated revenue, most of it from TV rights and ticket sales, be contributed to a pool for other teams.
Mark Walter, the Dodgers' controlling owner, was believed to be sharing details of the tentative deal Tuesday with Major League Baseball officials. Walter has negotiated extensively with the league over how much of the television money must be shared with the other 29 Major League teams.
The Dodgers' revenue-sharing bill could range from $1 billion to $2.7 billion, based on the structure of the deal.
The new channel would also give the Dodgers the opportunity to expand team-related programming throughout the day, as the Los Angeles Lakers do on their Time Warner Cable channel.
"If you look at what the Lakers are doing, they're communicating with their client base," Dodgers owner and Guggenheim Partners President Todd Boehly told The Times last fall. "It's fantastic. It becomes self-fulfilling. If you start interacting with the team in all-new ways, you're going to love the team even more."
Boehly was not available for comment.
The addition of a new Dodgers network would bring the number of local sports channels in Los Angeles to six, the most in any major city in the United States. Besides Time Warner Cable's SportsNet and Deportes, and Fox's Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West, the Pac-12 Conference also has its own channel here. Fox Sports West carries Los Angeles Kings and Los Angeles Angels games.
"That's too many channels," said Marc Ganis, a sports industry consultant in Chicago. "I can't imagine that is sustainable on a long-term basis."
Sports channels aren't cheap. Time Warner Cable already charges other cable and satellite operators close to $4 a month a subscriber for SportsNet. The Dodgers and Time Warner Cable are expected to seek as much as $5 for their new channel, which is double what Fox charges for Prime Ticket, according to industry consulting firm SNL Kagan.
Those price hikes are generally passed on to consumers, who may resent the increase.
"Why do I have to pay for the Dodgers when I am not a Dodgers fan?" said Laura Burnes, a mother of two who lives in Orange County. "I don't want to see my cable costs go up any more."
The cost for sports has skyrocketed over the last decade. That's partly because the content is seen as "DVR proof." It is watched live by viewers, which makes it more valuable to advertisers and networks than sitcoms and dramas, which are often recorded and viewed later by people who skip ads.
But non-sports fans and pay TV companies are increasingly frustrated at having to pick up the tab for big sports deals. There have been calls to sell sports channels "a la carte," or separately from other programming.
The Dodger agreement with Time Warner Cable may be a tipping point.
"That is the solution everyone should be looking at seriously," said Derek Chang, a former senior executive at satellite broadcaster DirecTV. Such a move, he added, may be the only way to lower the cost of TV sports. "Ultimately the market for fees would then reset."
The Dodger deal marks the second time in less than two years that Time Warner Cable has outbid Fox Sports for a Los Angeles franchise. In 2011, the company agreed to pay $3.6 billion for a 20-year accord with the Lakers, which had been on Fox Sports West.
Time Warner Cable used the Lakers to create SportsNet and Deportes, a Spanish-language sports channel.
The two media titans have also done battle on other turf.
Last year, Fox acquired an ownership stake in Yes, the New York sports channel that is home to the Yankees. In 2011, Fox outbid Time Warner Cable for rights to the San Diego Padres.
Losing the Dodgers will hurt Fox's Prime Ticket, but the company still has rights to the Los Angeles Clippers and Anaheim Ducks. A Fox executive said there are no plans to consolidate Prime Ticket and Fox Sports West, which besides the Angels also has rights to the Stanley Cup champion Kings.
Distributors will press for a reduction in the fee for Prime Ticket without the Dodgers, but it's not a sure thing they'll get it, Ganis said. When New York's MSG channel lost rights to the Yankees, the subscription fee did not decrease. joe.flint@latimes.com bill.shaikin@latimes.com
Dr. Bao-Thy Grant, an oral surgeon, in the exam room at the Honda Center, home to the Anaheim Ducks. (Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)
Dr. Bao-Thy Grant is responsible for any injuries from the neck up in hockey games at Anaheim. A mother figure, she looks out for the players and wonders why they have to be so hard on each other.
The doctor holds up a hand and says, "Wait." She turns away to rummage through a drawer, explaining: "I want to show you something."
It takes a moment to push aside the syringes and packets of gauze before she locates a small, white shard and cups it in her palm.
"Sometimes I save the broken teeth," she says.
Forty or so nights each winter, Dr. Bao-Thy Grant practices a different sort of medicine, setting up shop in a cramped room beneath the stands at Honda Center in Anaheim. She is the team oral surgeon for the Ducks.
Her patients arrive sweaty and out of breath, wearing helmets and skates. Maybe a flying puck has smashed them in the mouth. Maybe they need stitches for a high stick that has sliced open their cheek.
"We get some complex, deep lacerations that require deep sutures," she says. "You don't see that with an elderly woman who tripped taking out the trash."
This self-described "short Asian chick who knows nothing about hockey" administers to professional athletes who have unusually high thresholds for pain, yet she speaks to them in soothing tones as she cleans and numbs their wounds.
In the rough-and-tumble world of a violent sport, Grant sees herself as a mother figure, bugging the players to wear their mouth guards and wincing at every big hit on the ice. It makes her wonder: Why must they be so hard on each other?
"She certainly looks over us," defenseman Cam Fowler says. "You can tell that she doesn't like seeing us get injured."
With the Ducks facing the Edmonton Oilers on a Sunday evening, Grant arrives an hour early. The arena's medical office, adjoining the locker room, is nothing like her private practice in Orange.
The room is narrow and brightly lighted with supply cabinets along the back wall and, closer to the door, a dentist's chair. The black rubber floor has seen its share of sweat and blood over the years.
Putting on gloves, she begins her pregame routine, using disinfectant to wipe the counters, the lights, the phone — anything that might carry germs.
"I'm always sanitizing," she says. "I like a controlled setting."
Ryan Getzlaf, the team's star center, offers another explanation: "I think that's how she calms her nerves."
Teemu Selanne of the Anaheim Ducks is tended to by trainer Joe Huff and teammate Emerson Etem after an injury in a game against the Philadelphia Flyers on Oct. 29 in Philadelphia. (Jim McIsaac / Getty Images)
Grant specializes in oral and maxillofacial surgery, so she is responsible for any injuries from the neck up. With more players wearing mouth guards these days, shattered teeth are less common, but there are still plenty of cuts and the occasional facial fracture.
Teemu Selanne, the veteran winger, took a high stick to the mouth in late October. Six weeks later, she still checks on the wound, stopping by the locker room as the players stretch.
"She wants to make sure that we're going to look pretty again," Selanne says.
With the game drawing near, there is just enough time to eat dinner in an arena lounge, drink a cup of hot green tea and do one more thing.
"I always say a prayer," Grant says. "I pray that no one gets hurt."
I always say a prayer. I pray that no one gets hurt."
The other team doctors — two physicians — sit in the stands near the bench. Grant prefers to wait below, watching a television monitor on the wall so she can prepare for the moment a player goes down.
With muffled echoes of cheering outside her door, the 37-year-old finds a pair of scissors to begin working on Saku Koivu's custom mouth guard — like other players, the center wants a slim fit.
Trimming the edge makes the guard less effective, but if a player is more likely to wear it, she says, "that's better than nothing."
Grant grew up with a peculiar interest in the human mouth. As a teenager at North High in Torrance, she envied classmates who had braces and would bend paper clips into the shape of retainers.
"Why I was fascinated, I can't tell you," she says. "Everyone I looked at, I looked at their teeth."
After attending dental school at USC, Grant completed a four-year residency in the Bronx and married another dentist. In 2008, they settled in Orange County, where she began working with Dr. Jeffrey Pulver.
It was Pulver who introduced her to hockey. He had been the Ducks' oral surgeon, a fixture around the locker room since the team joined the NHL in 1993. Just before he died from cancer in 2010, he asked her to take over.
Though daunted by the unfamiliar territory, she agreed as a tribute to him.
Much of the game still eludes her after more than three seasons on the job. Technical rules such as icing are especially confusing, she says as players streak back and forth across the television screen.
Anaheim Ducks center Daniel Winnik (34) and Detroit Red Wings defenseman Danny DeKeyser (65) tangle in January at the Honda Center. (Reed Saxon / Associated Press)
But when the cheering shifts to a distinctive "oooh," Grant knows enough to stop trimming and glance over her shoulder at the monitor.
That sound usually accompanies a big hit. She says: "I still get nervous watching games."
Earlier this season, against the Phoenix Coyotes, center Daniel Winnik skated in front of the net for a chance to score. Phoenix defensemen Keith Yandle whipped around and caught Winnik with a high stick.
"It was the corner of my eye," the Ducks forward says.
When he walked into her room with blood streaming down his face, Grant's first job was to calm him down because she knew the adrenaline was running high.
"Take a deep breath," she said. "Do you want some water?"
The blow lacerated part of Winnik's eyelid, making the wound a bit tricky. Washing away the blood and sweat, Grant injected a local anesthetic while Winnik kept an eye on a clock ticking down the game time in glowing red numbers.
"You always want to get back as quickly as possible," he says.
Players aren't the only ones who grow antsy. NHL doctors treat both benches, and if the other team has someone in Grant's chair, opposing coaches frequently check in by walkie-talkie: How's it going? Are we done? What's the status?
In Winnik's case, it took extra time to examine the eyeball for damage — there was none — and delicately suture the lid. He needed ice to reduce swelling before returning to play in the second period.
"She's real calm and comforting," he says. "She tells you everything's going to be OK."
Her composure was partly an act. After he left, she felt anxious.
"I just sat and watched the television, kept my eye on him," she says.
Midway through the more recent game against Edmonton, the Ducks' trainer slip-slides across the ice to check on Jonas Hiller, lifting up the goalie's mask to peer underneath. Grant wonders aloud: "Did he get hit with a stick? Was it a puck?"
Hiller is fine and the crowd applauds as play resumes. Awhile later, center Nick Bonino is slammed into the boards, but it is another false alarm.
The Ducks' Cam Fowler falls as he goes after the puck in a November game against the Tampa Bay Lightning in Anaheim. He says of the team's dentist: "You can tell that she doesn't like seeing us get injured." (Jae C. Hong / Associated Press)
"What's the score?" Grant asks.
Goals and assists mean little to her. When the television shows highlights of players bashing into each other, drawing cheers from the crowd, she looks away. The Ducks who wear their mouth guards and clear plastic face shields are her favorites.
Grant seems more excited about Selanne's use of protective gear than the goal he scores against the Oilers late in the second period.
That high stick in October knocked out a bridge, requiring 40 stitches. It happened in Philadelphia and, when he flew home to see Grant, she realized things could have been much worse.
No permanent teeth were damaged. The bridge, which spans four front teeth, was struck so hard that it embedded in his mouth guard.
"I just cemented it back in place," she says. "He's my hero."
The rest of the Edmonton game passes without incident. Grant is happy to spend a quiet night in her office, chatting with an X-ray technician who has a table in an even smaller room next door.
As the final seconds tick down on a 3-2 win for the Ducks, she bags the instruments on her surgical tray. They will be sanitized at her office the next day. One of the team physicians, Orr Limpisvasti, comes by and asks Grant to help him suture a minor leg cut in the locker room.
"It's hard for people to understand my anxiety," she says. "Most of these guys are so young — they're texting their moms while I'm treating them, saying 'I'm OK.' "
If she had her way, hockey would be limited to shootouts, which the NHL uses to break tie scores. An offensive player goes one on one against a goalie.
"I like that," she says.
No one gets hit. No one gets hurt.
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