Lakers owner Jeanie Buss recently recalled the awful moment a fellow NBA owner grabbed her backside during her first NBA board of governors meeting in 1995.
“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 In Depth with Graham Bensinger. “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 became owner of the Lakers when her father Jerry Buss passed away in 2013.
This isn’t the first time she has spoken out about the incident, as she revealed it in her 2010 book Laker Girl.
She explained to Besinger how she wasn’t going to let the incident slide.
“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.”
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