When the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Orlando Magic 4 games to 1 in the NBA Finals, it marked another joyous occasion for one of the league’s most storied [and annoying] franchises.  The win also marked what many would consider to be another great one for Los Angeles Lakers owner, Dr. Jerry Buss.

But when the team was celebrating its victory along with 150,000 fans at a parade in downtown Los Angeles, Jerry Buss was nowhere to be found.

Buss has noted in the past that he hates the attention and traffic that championship parades bring. Before you go ahead and call Buss a total party-scrooge, have you ever tried driving across LA? It’s plenty hard enough without 150K screaming bandwagon fans, celebs and confetti littering the streets.

So instead of attending the parade, Buss did something WAY better. He was playing poker at the Bicycle Casino, which is just 10 miles from the parade route.

As far as billionaires go, that’s a pretty bad ass move. “Yeah, instead of patting myself on the back for another NBA Championship, I think I’ll go grind out a few more wins.” If I was that rich, I’d do the same…only in a helicopter above the parade with more realistic looking hair.

Jerry Buss has been a high stakes poker player for decades now, but he’s also had some solid finishes in poker tournaments too.  His most notable finish was a third place effort in a 1991 World Series of Poker Seven Card Stud event while he also took second place in a 2003 World Poker Tour freeroll invitational too.

Aside from playing in numerous cash games and tournaments over the years, Buss has also managed to appear on poker television shows as well.  He’s been featured on GSN’s High Stakes Poker in addition to the NBC late night poker series Poker After Dark.

The fact that Buss has been on poker TV shows is a bit puzzling since he normally hates the limelight.  After his Lakers won the championship, Jerry’s son Joey Buss accepted the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy in his place.

Buss is easily my favorite part of the Lakers franchise — which might not be saying too much — but this poker-during-the-parade stunt really moved him up another notch.

Tags: News

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 2:18 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.