Lakers Executive Takes Page From The Noynoy Playbook

 
“….we don’t get depressed. Here’s what we call our golden rule. Have faith in you and the things you do, you won’t go wrong this is our family jewel”

Sister Sledge

 

Dr. Jerry Buss built the Lakers into one of the best run teams in professional sport. There is no more popular team in the Los Angeles area and there is no more popular team in the Philippines as far as I am concerned. Need to know and perhaps be inspired by the story of Dr. Buss you can go here.  When he died earlier this year  he left the team in the hands of his son Jim Buss.

 

Magic Johnson does not see a Disney ending for this chapter of the Laker storybook. Magic of course had an inside view of what made the older Buss a success since he was the key cog of the Lakers Showtime in the 80’s. Jerry Buss was originally a chemist by profession. He was smart, had vision and ambition. Magic says what clinched Jerry Buss’ Midas touch was that he surrounded himself with good people and often sought their counsel in decision making. Magic in an interview (710 ESPN Max & Marcellus: [hr2]: 10/29/13  ) specifically referred to himself as well as Mitch Kupchak and Jerry West as people Buss would consult in terms of basketball decisions. There is apparently something to this humility thing.

 

Jerry Buss was secure with his abilities and was also aware of the abilities of people he hired. When the Lakers transitioned to the control of Jim Buss after the death of Jerry, it seems like Jim did not learn from his dad. Magic in the interview states that now that the younger Buss’ ego is involved and he will try to disprove the skeptics. For some reason Jim did not seem to notice that his dad all throughout surrounded himself with ” great basketball expertise.” All those inputs enhanced his decision not take away from it. Jerry Buss wanted to be in a room occupied by other people who would challenge him.

 

Jim Buss seems to want no part of accessing intelligent people on the way to making decisions. It is all about him and him alone. As Colin Cowherd says “Insecure guy who has to dominate”. Secure smart people do not feel threatened by other secure smart people. They are actually useful to your cause since they can relate to big boy challenges. Any of the hardcore Laker fans out there knew of Jim Buss before the death of his father? Was he a rising star among all of the NBA front offices? Sharp eyed GRP readers know where I am going with this.

 

It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.

Harry S. Truman

 

Magic goes on and said that Jim Buss’ decisions seemed to be made out of panic. Like the last two coaching hires of the Lakers. What is worse that decisions are not made based on what is the best decision but what will appear to be organic to Jim Buss. It is more important that this be perceived as a Jim Buss decision that it be the right decision. This behavior goes counter to his dad’s example as well as the Harry Truman quote.

 

We recently recognized All Souls Day but three days earlier prime time TV was stopped so we could be addressed by someone whose soul’s very existence could be questioned. I stated as much in my blog post Luneta Pork protest.  He flip flops on issues like the public outrage on the prok barrel issue because he himself has no road map for his own Daang Matuwid. As stated by GRP’s Ilda ,  Noynoy spends money in the public coffers without even clearing it with congress. Common sense dictates that you will not do something as clandestine as that without some personal payoff. If it was good for everybody why hide it from Congress? If it is good for everybody why not have full and complete disclosure? If it is good for everybody why is it only hitting the fan now?

 

What you want out of government is to give you bang for your buck. For all the leftists out there who believe that government should be big and all encompassing and that the private sector should know there place keep in mind one simple principle. Governments are financed by the private sector. The private sector makes the money, they get taxed by the government and the government gets to spend the money. There is no reason whatsoever to wish any kind of ill on private corporations like many leftists do. It is a prerequisite to being more than moderately left.

 

Ideally the government should be like your household help. You instruct them to go to the market for you and buy things necessary for running your household like food and maintenance supplies. The problem with our government as I see it is that they decide what market to go, what food to buy whether you like it or not and worse they go to places with your money and spend money on themselves. It has no bearing on your household. It might have bearing on their standing with other household helps in the neighborhood but not in your household.

To make matters worse, let’s say you have supplies in your house to make one rack of lamb dinner each week for the next four months. New household help comes in and they decide that you are better off with lechon kawali and they just let the previous ingredients rot while you spend on the new ingredients. Or they can sell the old ingredients and pocket 100% of the proceeds. While you pick up the expense for all of it. Consumed or not consumed.

 

That is government folks. That is the problem with voting in somebody out of pity and not respect. Somebody with no leadership and no history of crisis handling is that they have it in their head that is what you want and that is what they will give you. You gave them the license to behave self indulgently with your money. Last year I wrote on what I thought was the mentality of Noynoy  that allowed him to justify his behavior.

 

“The President does not like admitting he is wrong. Don’t tell him he’s wrong,” warned the source. “He’s not very good with criticism.” Instead, he only admits to his faults “in his own time.”

 

Aquino’s presidential management style
BY NATASHYA GUTIERREZ

 

Noynoy did not nothing with his professional and personal life for the first fifty years of his life. Noynoy like Jim Buss inherited their position based on a famous parent not because of anything they may may not have done in the past. He never built anything that could convince anybody he was presidential material. No business , no organization and no family. There is a saying “experience is the name we give our mistakes.” You know how you avoid mistakes in life? You do nothing. You don’t step up to the plate because you might strike out. Noynoy’s campaign maybe spent .0001 % of their time talking about his experience. But this is the Philippines and we have our own set of values here. Family name trumps experience, judgement and crisis handling. I am not really arguing it but I am mocking it. I mock it because people ask for it then get surprised when they get the very thing they ask for. As for that Rappler story, another example why some believe they are just an extension of the Malacanang Communications Group masquerading as journalists.

The problem with the Philippines is it is all about vanity and hardly about doing the job right. There are no safeguards in place to prevent people like BS Aquino to cancel a project not because of feasibility or changing conditions. They were cancelled because if they worked in helping the public The results would have that side effect of making Noynoy look bad by making GMA look good. Noynoy won’t stand for that. Insecure, unaccomplished people are like that. They can only look good if another looks bad. Roger Federer and Tiger Woods are friends because both can relate to the focus it takes to be the best in the world in one thing. Noynoy is that insecure guy who wants to dominate. Which is why Noynoy is so quick to render everything by his predecessor as irrelevant. It is not because it will not work. It is because it is not his, it is GMA’s. It is well known that GMA was his professor in Ateneo. It should be noted nobody ever asked Noynoy to teach anything. There are no courses available in Ateneo for PSP 101.

 

When Noynoy goes on and on about Daang Matuwid it is all about his self aggrandizing. Much like Jim Buss wanting to make statements with his own decisions and proclamations. Noynoy’s speech on the 30th of October is true to his role as more excuse maker than doer. All he said was the guilt is out there and not with him. Too bad he forgot to include the why. Like the hiring and firing of Mike Brown for the Lakers, it was also a move of desperation for Noynoy. A risk that immediately impacted whatever cohesion his team had. More on that in this story from the Manila Standard.

The pork barrel like I said before is Noynoy’s spinach. He was never one for leadership which of course makes him an odd choice for president.  The pork barrel is Noynoy’s performance enhancing drug. Yet he will try to convince the public that just because he is the president he is not like the other steroid takers. He is clean. Yet the way I see it, he is addicted to the very thing he is in denial of. Very similar to Elvis Presley being appointed by Richard Nixon  as a narcotics officer despite Elvis himself being dependent on the very thing he swore he will fight against. Noynoy despite all his vindictive, playground behavior walks around like he has no idea of the concept ” what goes around comes around”. Useless, arrogant and clueless is a really really bad combination. Make no mistake, you will be prying the pork barrel from Noynoy’s cold dead hands.

 

Noynoy with no pork barrel to wield is like the old ugly guy who lost his fortune suddenly. There will be no more young babes in his future. They both have been figuratively castrated.