Dr. Jerry Buss, the legendary Basketball Hall of Fame owner of the Los Angeles Lakers who died Monday, was by vocation a chemist, the Dr. before his name for his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Southern California at age 24.
Smart man, surely.
But it takes more than being intelligent to be successful, especially to the level of Buss, who turned a modest real estate investment into the greatest U.S. sports empire in the last three decades with ownership of the Lakers, the Lakers' arena, the NHL team, the WNBA team, teams in soccer and team tennis and a massive cable TV deal.