News details have emerged surrounding Magic Johnson’s resignation from the Lakers as president of basketball operations earlier this month.
According to a Bleacher Report (via Sporting News), the NBA star quit after he was copied on emails between team co-owner Jeanie Buss and general manager Rob Pelinka criticizing his performance with the Lakers.
Fox Sports 1 analyst Ric Bucher shared details about the emails during his appearance on “The Herd with Colin Cowherd” on Wednesday.
“My understanding is that there were some emails that were exchanged between Rob and Jeanie about Magic and about what Magic was and wasn’t doing,” Bucher told Cowherd. “They were critical emails. And somehow, some way, Jeanie from what I understand was CC’ing or BCC’ing Magic on everything. That was sort of protocol, standard issue. Somehow the exchange between Rob and Jeanie ended up on that string of the blind CC’s that were going to Magic,” he explained.
“So Magic now is seeing emails from Rob to Jeanie that were critical of what he was doing. And maybe most important in all of this, there’s no indication that Jeanie was backing Rob up, in terms of either going to Magic and letting him know that this was going on, or going back at Rob and defending Magic. That was not happening. And so when he talked about the backstabbing, to me my understanding is that’s what started it.”
Johnson appeared to co-sign Bucher’s comments with a tweet on Thursday, saying: “The truth will always come to light,” he wrote (see the post below).
Magic didn’t tell Buss or Pelinka about his decision to quit before shocking fans and NBA colleagues with the announcement at the Lakers’ final game of the season.
“What I didn’t like was the backstabbing and the whispering,” Johnson told reporters. “I didn’t like that. I didn’t like a lot of things that went on that didn’t have to go on.”
