Jeanie Buss opened up on “In Depth with Graham Bensinger” about how an NBA owner grabbed her butt during her first NBA board of governors meeting.
“As we were waiting, taking a break from the meeting and everybody’s in line for the buffet for lunch during the lunch break, somebody grabs my ass,” Buss said on the show. “I turn around and I was so shocked. But it was like, again — if I didn’t have the confidence that my dad put in me, that was a moment where I wanted to shrink and to be nothing, that I would have, you know, gotten sick and said, ‘I gotta go.’ Do I really belong here? You know, I’m just really not one of the group, like I’m been singled out.
“It made me really self conscious.”
Buss, who became the controlling owner of the team upon the death of her father, Jerry Buss, in 2013, first revealed that harrowing action from a fellow owner in her November 2010 book “Laker Girl.”
The alleged sexual harassment happened in 1995, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Buss told Bensinger she didn’t back down from that owner.
“I just gave him a dirty look, like back off,” Buss said. “And I stayed in the room. I realized that I might not be able to gain the respect of the existing ownership groups. But everybody that came after me, I could help them in the room because they’d be the new person.”
Buss said she used that experience to try to make life easier for the next wave of owners.
“So, then the next new person was Mark Cuban. And I made sure that from day one, I put my hand out to him and said, ‘Hey, if I can help you understand any of this stuff, if there’s any questions, here’s my number. Call me now and I’ll help you and I’ll support you.’”
Buss, who married comedian Jay Mohr on Sept. 3, also detailed the challenges she faced at the beginning of her career being a woman in a man-dominated profession.
“It was a heated negotiation. We’re around a conference table and I was getting bullied in a way that often times happens to a woman — meaning, the guy used some four-letter words and when he did, he turned to me specifically and said, ‘No offense,’ ‘Pardon my language,’” Buss said. “And it was literally the tap on the head, little girl, you know, fragile, ‘I’m drawing attention to the fact you’re the only woman in the room.’
“And so I said, ‘Look, if you’re gonna apologize to me, you apologize to everybody in this room.’ In other words, you’re not gonna isolate me and make me feel less than anybody in this room. I’m an equal, and I belong here. I’ve heard other women have the same kinda circumstance.”
Buss, who was previously engaged to Phil Jackson, said it’s “really difficult to be the only woman in the room” and is pleased that has changed over time.
“That was like 25 years ago, and now I’m not the only woman in the room,” Buss said. “I don’t stand out, and it isn’t something that people use against me like they did so many years ago because I was unusual or kind of a prop or whatever. I belonged in the room, and they tried to take that away from me.”
Read more
