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Jeanie Buss was picked as one of Forbes’ top 10 most powerful women in U.S. sports back in 2018 and in 2020 she became the first woman to own a championship NBA team after the Los Angeles Lakers won their 17th championship.
However, seeing Buss, 61, alongside the tall stars of the Lakers has prompted many fans to wonder exactly what height the Lakers president and controlling owner is. Buss is 5’7″ (1.70 m), according to her profile on IMDB.
Jeanie Buss Spoke About Appearing as a Model for Playboy
Buss has definitely carved her own path over the years and has an impressive resume as an executive and general manager. However, Buss has also taken unexpected decisions, such as posing for Playboy. After her marriage to Steve Timmons ended in 1993, she shared with Sports Illustrated that her self-esteem took a hit. She said she asked herself, “Is there anything I’ve always wanted to do but haven’t?” The answer was appearing nude in Playboy.
According to Johnny Buss, his sister had always been insecure about her appearance, Sports Illustrated wrote. She also had connections to Playboy. Her aunt Susan was a Playboy bunny, Buss told the Beverly Hills Courier, and her father owned the Phoenix, Arizona, Playboy Club. She said she reached out to the magazine editors and pitched her look. “My dad was very good friends with Hugh Hefner, but I auditioned like any other person who wanted to pose for the magazine,” she revealed. “They had to send my pictures to Chicago to be approved.”
Buss’ photos were approved, which turned into a six-page spread in Playboy’s May 1995 issue. She said the shoot was something she’d wanted to do for herself. “It was for my own personal growth and coming to terms with who I am and fulfilling a dream,” she revealed in her interview with the Beverly Hills Courier. A few years later, Buss posed for Sports Illustrated in a photo that appeared to show her in the nude holding two basketballs and that photo also caused a bit of a stir, she shared.
Jeanie Buss Said She Got Criticism for Her Photoshoot for Sports Illustrated
Lakers’ Jeanie Buss: She’s Got Balls | Vault #ThrowbackThursday to 1998 for this story in Sports Illustrated. This is where my avi came from – not from Playboy (most often asked question).
Buss said Sports Illustrated first decided to photograph her as part of a bigger story on the Buss family in 1998. She told the Beverly Hills Courier that her siblings and her father were all interviewed about his plans for the Lakers after his retirement.
She said the Buss children were all told to cooperate with the interviews and the photo shoot. The photographer told her his idea for the photo, Buss shared, and she sharply declined. “And he goes, ‘I’m really sorry, but I don’t know who you are,'” she recounted. “‘I’m a fashion photographer. I’ve never been hired by Sports Illustrated before. They told me to come and take a picture of you. And the only requirement that I had was I had to somehow put basketballs in the picture. I was trying to find inspiration,'” she said the photographer told her.
She agreed with the shoot, and later Buss said she was wearing a bathing suit and wasn’t nude, so she didn’t expect the shot to turn out looking that way. She described the final result as a “beautiful” photo reminiscent of a 1940s pin-up shot. “Sports Illustrated loved it so much that they changed the entire article to ‘She’s Got Balls,'” she revealed.
The Lakers head said she ended up using the photo for her Twitter profile photo and was told by certain people that they didn’t want to work with her because of it. “And I’m like, what are you telling me? To censor a picture that was in Sports Illustrated?” she retorted, saying she didn’t cave to their requests.
Buss’ decision to forge her own path has carried her throughout her career, telling the New York Times that she got a lot of pushback over some of her decisions, like posing for Playboy, but that “too many people want you to fit you into what their aspirations are for you.”
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