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Mitch Kupchak thinks ‘everything changed’ for the Lakers when Jerry Buss died, and the further they got from his death, ‘the worse it got’

There are precious few examples of those tasked with following in their brilliant parents’ footsteps actually living up to those expectations. To listen to Mitch Kupchak’s retelling, the Los Angeles Lakers after the passing of Dr. Jerrys Buss was no outlier to that rule.

As Kupchak prepares for All-Star Weekend in his newest home city of Charlotte, he sat down with Bill Oram of The Athletic for a sprawling feature in which Kupchak was incredibly forthcoming, potentially most notably about the leadership void left behind by arguably the greatest owner in the history of American professional sports:

In the four years after Dr.