L.A. fans were apparently picking up what the Lakers owner was putting down.
Los Angeles Lakers team majority owner Jeanie Buss pulled a Steve Ballmer, sitting near courtside last night during L.A.’s 130-116 Crypto.com Arena loss against a sharpshooting Lauri Markkanen and the visiting Utah Jazz.
L.A.’s best player, All-Star forward LeBron James, battled through a sore left foot that seemed to hamper his lift on occasion. That said, the 37-year-old still managed to put up 17 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists and throw down on a couple spectacular plays. Buss was particularly animated after this give-and-go with Lakers guard Austin Reaves:
Los Angeles fans seemed enthused by the sight of Buss taking in the game. She has been a fun occasional presence during her team’s home games lately.
A segment of the Lakers fans were apparently very, very enthused that Buss was hanging out, as you’ll see.
There were some fairly innocent shoot-your-shot type tweets, typified by this one:
Here’s a more literal attempt:
For the record, it appears that Buss has been dating actor Jay Mohr (perhaps best known to sports fans as Tom Cruise’s rival sports agent in “Jerry Maguire”) for possibly as long as five years, and it seems like they’re very happy, so all the Twitter love is nice, but will go unrequited.
Some were more passive observations of fans casually crushing:
If you’re wondering, yes, we did see some thirstier tweets:
Trust us, this is actually fairly tame:
Fans also served up a lot of posts along these lines:
We’re barely scratching the surface. Comments ranged from understated…
…To emphatic:
The Lakers’ most expensive player, Russell Westbrook, even got meme-ified for the occasion:
While they hoped to have her attention, fans also took to making some roster requests:
Unless that frontcourt player is going to be a significant upgrade over barely-utilized center Damian Jones (i.e. someone earning more than the veteran’s minimum), would we even get an assurance that head coach Darvin Ham would play them?
Those asks included some hoops heads pining for Lakers of yesteryear, looking pretty good in other teams’ jerseys:
Buss, who has acted as team governor since 2013, hasn’t always opted to be such a public presence when watching her Lakers. Fans were generally appreciative that she seemed to be enjoying herself at a game that, through three quarters at least, was fairly competitive.
