More details are now emerging of just why Magic Johnson suddenly stepped down as the President of Basketball Operations without even informing Jeanie Buss or Rob Pelinka before he told reporters.
Magic told a tale of wanting to be more free, but it seems as if it was way deeper than that.
According to the Bleacher Report’s Ric Bucher, Johnson was blind copied on some emails that were critical of the job he was doing. Those emails came from Buss and Pelinka.
Via USA Today:
“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. They were critical emails. And somehow, someway, Jeanie, from what I understand, was CC’ing or blind CC’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. So, Magic now is seeing emails from Rob to Jeanie that were critical of what he was doing and maybe most important in all this is that there was no indication that Jeanie was backing Rob up in terms of either going to Magic and letting him know 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 that’s what started it. The fact that Jeanie waved goodbye and said ‘Thank you for all that you did’ was that she didn’t necessarily disagree with what Rob was saying.”
If that has any truth to it, then Magic clearly felt back-stabbed that he was being talked about, so he responded like he did and gave them the same amount of respect Buss and Pelinka gave him.
