After working for the Lakers for 40 years, West's relationship with the team splintered beyond repair. "I almost wish," he told ESPN, "that I had never played or worked for them."
West, then the team’s general manager, pushed Dr. Buss to hire Phil Jackson, a decision that would come to define an entire era of Lakers dominance. Multiple staffers present at the time said the decision to hire Jackson over Rambis sparked friction between Rambis and West as well as between West and Rambis’ wife, Linda, the Lakers’ executive director of special projects who is a close friend and confidant of Jeanie Buss, now the team’s governor.
In the ensuing months, a second element compounded the tension: the romantic relationship between Jeanie and Jackson, a partnership West was uncomfortable with and one about which he privately voiced his concerns to confidants. Word of his displeasure eventually reached Jeanie.
The relationship between West and the team’s leadership began to splinter even more, with West increasingly iced out of the only NBA organization he’d ever known. In 2000, after the team won its sixth title with him in an executive role, he retired. “I felt underappreciated by leadership, and leadership is ownership,” West told the L.A. Times. “As we left the Forum to Staples Center, I’d say, ‘What am I doing here? What am I doing to myself?’ Destructive feelings, a different drama every day. Leaving was the biggest relief of my life.”
And then he came to the Bay! I wish we’d let him retire here, but it’s cool that he went back to LA via the Clippers.
Hindsight being 20/20 great move by West, In the end we saw what Rambis did without Kobe/Shaq.