1. Gerald Hatten Buss was an American businessman, investor, chemist, and philanthropist.
32 Facts About Jerry Buss
1. 2.
Jerry Buss was the majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers of the National Basketball Association, winning 10 league championships that were highlighted by the team's Showtime era during the 1980s.
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Jerry Buss was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame as a contributor.
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Jerry Buss's father, Lydus, was an accountant who went on to teach statistics at Berkeley, who abandoned Buss after his first birthday and never returned.
5.
When he was nine years old, Jerry Buss moved with his mother to Los Angeles; three years later when she remarried, they then moved to Kemmerer, Wyoming and lived in a six-room home with his half-brother Mickey, his half-sister Susan, and stepbrother Jim.
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Jerry Buss earned a scholarship to the University of Wyoming, graduating with a BS degree in two and a half years in 1953.
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Jerry Buss then returned to Los Angeles and attended the University of Southern California, where he earned an MS and PhD in physical chemistry in 1957 at the age of 24.
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Jerry Buss started as a chemist for the Bureau of Mines ; he then briefly worked in the aerospace industry for McDonnell Douglas and was on the faculty of USC's chemistry department.
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Jerry Buss originally invested in real estate to provide supplementary income so he could continue teaching.
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In 1979, Jerry Buss purchased Pickfair, the Beverly Hills estate once owned by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks; he sold it in 1987.
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In 1974, Jerry Buss produced a movie named Black Eye starring former gridiron star Fred "the Hammer" Williamson.
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Jerry Buss was an owner of the Phoenix location of the Playboy Club.
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Jerry Buss became an owner of the Los Angeles Strings in World Team Tennis.
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Jerry Buss later sold his controlling interest in the Kings to Bruce McNall in 1988.
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Jerry Buss then reached a major advertising agreement with Great Western Bank for the naming rights to The Forum, resulting in the official name of the building being changed to the Great Western Forum.
16.
Later, when the WNBA was formed in 1996, Jerry Buss took charge of operating that league's Los Angeles franchise, the Los Angeles Sparks.
17.
The Lakers were very successful under Jerry Buss' ownership, winning 10 NBA championships with such players as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Shaquille O'Neal, Kobe Bryant, and Pau Gasol, and with coaches Paul Westhead, Pat Riley and Phil Jackson.
18.
Jerry Buss inspired the Lakers' Showtime era with his vision that basketball games must be entertaining.
19.
In 2002, when the WNBA was restructured to give its teams individual owners, Jerry Buss took ownership of the Sparks.
20.
Jerry Buss owned the Los Angeles Lazers of the Major Indoor Soccer League.
21.
Jerry Buss received the Golden Plate Award from the American Academy of Achievement in 1983.
22.
Jerry Buss was a high-stakes cash game poker player for many years, but later in life was more active in tournament games.
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Jerry Buss appeared in the GSN series High Stakes Poker and the NBC late-night series Poker After Dark.
24.
In January 2008, Jerry Buss donated $7.5 million to USC's Department of Chemistry to fund two endowed chairs and an endowed scholarship fund for chemistry graduate students; the two chairs were to be named after his mentors at USC, Professors Sidney Benson and David Dows.
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Jerry Buss was an inaugural member of the USC College Board of Councilors.
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Jerry Buss's philanthropy extended to people associated with the Lakers.
27.
When former Lakers player Walt Hazzard, then an adviser to the team, suffered a catastrophic stroke in 1996, Jerry Buss kept Hazzard on the payroll and told Hazzard's son that his father would remain a Lakers employee for as long as Jerry Buss owned the team.
28.
Jerry Buss allegedly married his second wife, Veronica Hoff, in 1972 while still married to his first wife, JoAnn.
29.
Jerry Buss dated Debbie Zafrani, a Playboy bunny and the younger sister of the wife of Lakers player Kurt Rambis.
30.
On May 29,2007, Jerry Buss was issued a citation for driving under the influence after two California Highway Patrol officers saw him driving his gold Mercedes-Benz on the wrong side of the road in the coastal community of Carlsbad in northern San Diego County, with a 23-year-old woman passenger.
31.
In 2012, Jerry Buss was in a hospital for months with an undisclosed intestinal problem.
32.
On February 14,2013, four days before his death, it was revealed that Jerry Buss had been battling cancer since 2012.