Jeanie Buss meets with Kobe Bryant

The Los Angeles Lakers are hoping to return to the top of the NBA ranks sooner rather than later, and it looks like they are going to lean on some of the best players in franchise history to help get them there.

The Lakers announced last week that they are hiring Magic Johnson in a front office role, which says a lot about the direction of the organization. Jeanie Buss meeting with Kobe Bryant recently may say just as much.

While it’s possible Buss, one of the Lakers owners, was just having lunch with an old friend, we’d be shocked if the two didn’t discuss basketball.

The Lakers have 18 wins this year, which is already one more than they had all of last season. You can call that an improvement, but they still have the second-worst record in all of basketball and are all but certain to miss the playoffs for a fourth consecutive season.

Buss said in July 2015 that her brother Jim, who is currently the team’s executive vice president of basketball operations, would step down if the Lakers had not made a deep run. That would be this upcoming July, and the hiring of Johnson is a good sign that Jim will follow through with that promise.

Johnson has been highly critical of Jim Buss for years (read the most recent criticism here), so it’s highly unlikely he would have agreed to join the organization if Jim is going to maintain control of basketball operations. And if Jeanie Buss was seeking advice from Kobe, it would not be a surprise if he also gave a “thumbs down” vote for her brother.