Magic Johnson reportedly resigned from Lakers after being copied on emails criticizing his performance

Magic Johnson reportedly resigned from Lakers after being copied on emails criticizing his performance image

Magic Johnson shocked the Lakers and the NBA world when he abruptly stepped down from his position as president of basketball operations earlier this month. 

A new report reveals the NBA Hall of Famer quit after he was copied on emails between Lakers co-owner Jeanie Buss and general manager Rob Pelinka criticizing his performance with the team. Bleacher Report senior writer and Fox Sports 1 analyst Ric Bucher shared details about the communication errors in the front office during his appearance on "The Herd with Colin Cowherd" on Wednesday.

(Bucher discusses the Lakers around the 6:30 mark of the video below.)

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"My understanding is that there were some emails that were exchanged between Rob and Jeanie about Magic and about what Magic was and wasn’t doing," Bucher told Cowherd. "They were critical emails. And somehow, some way, Jeanie from what I understand was CC'ing or BCC'ing Magic on everything. That was sort of protocol, standard issue. Somehow the exchange between Rob and Jeanie ended up on that string of the blind CC's that were going to Magic.

"So Magic now is seeing emails from Rob to Jeanie that were critical of what he was doing. And maybe most important in all of this, there's no indication that Jeanie was backing Rob up, in terms of either going to Magic and letting him know that this was going on, or going back at Rob and defending Magic. That was not happening. And so when he talked about the backstabbing, to me my understanding is that's what started it."

Johnson appeared to back up Bucher's report with this tweet on Thursday.

Johnson didn't tell Buss or Pelinka about his decision to quit before announcing it to the media ahead of the Lakers' final game of the 2018-19 season.

"What I didn’t like was the backstabbing and the whispering," Johnson said at the impromptu press conference. "I didn’t like that. I didn’t like a lot of things that went on that didn’t have to go on."