Ronny Turiaf is in the French Basketball Hall of Fame today, but his life and career might have panned out very differently had it not been for former Los Angeles Lakers majority owner Dr. Jerry Buss. Former Lakers trainer Gary Vitti appeared on the latest episode of Byron Scott’s Fast Break podcast, where she spoke about Buss paying $1 million so that Turiaf could have life-saving surgery.
“Unbelievable story of this kid who’s lived his entire life trying to figure out how he’s going to get his mother and his sister out of a Parisian ghetto,” Vitti said. “He’s big. Starts playing basketball. That’s my way out. Gonaga picks him up. We draft him. He goes through the Combine physicals, passes everything.
“Although there’s a notation,” Vitti stated. “All it said on this was E for enlarged, A for aortic, R for root, but it didn’t spell it out. Enlarged aortic root. It was just EAR. Easily I could have missed it easily, ’cause he passed. And then the next thing we know, we’re sending him to UCLA, and they think he has Marfan’s. He looks at him, he goes, ‘This guy doesn’t have Marfan’s, but he has a really big enlarged aortic root.’
“Next thing we send him to Stanford,” Vitti continued. “And so we haven’t signed him to a contract. He’s up there. We get a call from that specialist. He says, ‘I’m not worried about Ronny Turiaf dying on the basketball court. I’m worried about Ronny Turiaf dropping dead walking down the sidewalk today.’ How about that?
“We hadn’t signed him,” Vitti added. “He had no healthcare insurance. Gonzaga was done with him. We weren’t responsible for him. We hadn’t signed him to a contract. He had no healthcare insurance. Now he needs a million-dollar surgery to save his life. Forget about playing basketball. Dr. Buss ponied up cash out of his own pocket to save this kid’s life, not ever knowing if he would ever play basketball.”
Turiaf was born and raised on the island of Martinique, an overseas territory of France. He moved to Paris in 1998 and then headed to the United States in 2001 after accepting an offer from Gonzaga.
Turiaf spent four seasons with the Bulldogs and then decided to go pro in 2005. The Lakers selected him with the 37th pick in the 2005 NBA Draft, but soon realized all wasn’t well. It was during a physical exam four weeks after the draft that they discovered an enlarged aortic root.
Now, Vitti said here that the Lakers hadn’t signed Turiaf to a contract at that point, but that’s not true. They had given him a two-year deal, but failing the physical meant it was voided.
The Lakers were not required to help Turiaf at that point, but Buss decided to do it anyway. He financed the open-heart surgery that the Frenchman underwent.
Turiaf made a full recovery, and the Lakers then signed him to a new two-year deal in January 2006. He’d end up spending 10 seasons in total in the NBA, and according to Spotrac, he made $22.9 million in salaries.
Buss’ gesture ensured Turiaf fulfilled his goal of taking care of his family. In 2015, he expressed his gratitude in an article for The Players’ Tribune.
“‘Gratitude’ is also my word for the Lakers. Once I failed my physical, they had zero obligation to pay for my surgery. Zero. I had never even met Dr. Buss at that point. But they did, and they were added to the list of people I needed to honor by getting back on the court.
“I don’t think many people know this, but after every home game I played with the Lakers, I would see Dr. Buss in the Chairman’s Lounge. Just to make sure I acknowledged him. We had that unspoken language. He knew why I was coming to see him, and looked at me like, ‘I got you, son. You’re part of the family.’”
Buss wasn’t around to read this, though. He passed away on Feb. 13, 2013, due to kidney failure. You’d imagine that was a sad day in the Turiaf household.
Turiaf then announced his retirement in 2016. He finished his NBA career with averages of 4.7 points, 3.7 rebounds, 1.3 assists, 0.4 steals, and 1.3 blocks per game.
