The Lakers should be in better hands now. They just can’t escape the drama

The NBA was verging on being a failing business when Jerry Buss bought the Los Angeles Lakers from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979 for $67.5 million. Pro basketball only had a small television footprint at the time, attendance was falling, teams were claiming to lose money, and the league couldn’t untangle itself from the perception that its players would rather do an eight ball than dive for loose balls. The NBA’s meteoric rise over the next 20 years happened for a variety of reasons, but the story of its success goes hand-in-hand with Buss turning the Lakers into arguably the premier franchise in American sports.

The Lakers drafted Magic Johnson about a month after Buss’ acquisition closed, and the rest is history. Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar led Los Angeles to five championships, and when they were done, it didn’t take the Lakers long to reboot around Shaquille O’Neal, Kobe Bryant, and Phil Jackson for another five championships. The Lakers were just about a model franchise until Buss died in 2013 and left the team to his six children. Since then, the team has a sub-.500 cumulative record, one championship, and a behind-the-scenes power struggle among the siblings worthy of prestige TV.

The Buss family drama should have ended when the siblings agreed to sell the franchise to Mark Walter for $10 billion last year. Only one problem: that sale included a provision that said Jeanie Buss would continue to serve as the team’s governor for five years. That seemed like a pretty sweet deal for Jeanie until Walter turned around and flipped the franchise to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger earlier this month for $12.5 billion. Jeanie’s place with the franchise going forward seemed to be in peril after that deal, and it got even weirder on Monday.

ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that the Buss siblings sold off the remaining 17.8% of the franchise it owns to Kushner and Iger. Five of the siblings wanted to sell. Jeanie didn’t. Jeanie’s lawyers are now arguing that the siblings cannot legally sell their shares without Jeanie’s approval because it goes against the family trust, according to a report by CNBC.

The Lakers finally thought they were out of this mess when Walter bought the team last year. The backstabbing between the Buss siblings had been legendary since their father died. Jeanie fired her brother Jim Buss in 2017 and replaced him with Magic Johnson as team president. Jim and his brother Johnny Buss then unsuccessfully tried to overthrow Jeanie by kicking her off the board of directors, but it went against the terms of the trust. Jeanie responded by filing a restraining order against her brothers. The end result was that Jeanie would serve as the controlling owner as long as the family owned the Lakers. Jeanie blessed the sale to Walter a year ago under the condition that she would have a few years left as governor. Now all that appears to be out the window pending even more lawsuits.

Lakers fans thought they had a dream ownership situation when Walter agreed to buy the team a year ago. He had been a terrific owner for MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers, spending a record amount of money on contracts that helped the team win the last two World Series. It appears that Walter’s empire started to crumble when the DOJ began breathing down his neck for loan fraud related to the Lakers purchase. Now he’s also in talks to sell his shares of English football powerhouse Chelsea. Walter needs to get liquid quickly, and it’s hard to beat cashing out an investment that makes you $2.5 billion in under a year. That’s what he originally bought the Dodgers for back in 2012.

The federal investigation sure seems like it played a role in Walter’s sale to Kushner and Iger. It isn’t lost on anyone that Donald Trump’s DOJ is investigating Walter to the point that he had to sell the Lakers to brother of his son-in-law (Jared Kushner is heavily involved in the White House’s Middle East diplomacy). The idea that the Lakers and Dodgers would both be able to out-spend their rivals quietly started to crash and burn when the feds began poking around Walter’s empire, even if no one realized it at the time. It’s left the franchise in an extremely vulnerable position with Kushner’s private equity firm now controlling the team with no experience in owning sports franchises.

The timing of all this is fascinating from an on-court perspective. The Lakers essentially mortgaged their future this summer to build around Luka Doncic with two years remaining on his contract. Los Angeles knew it needed a strong defensively center, so it traded two future first-round picks and two swaps for Walker Kessler. The Lakers then handed out four-year contracts to Sandro Mamukelashvili and Quentin Grimes while giving Collin Sexton two years, while most other NBA free agents were only getting one year deals.

The Lakers are all-in. They can’t trade a future first-round pick for the next seven years. Lead executive Rob Pelinka improved this team in some potentially meaningful ways, but they still lost LeBron James in free agency, still play in the loaded Western Conference, and still need to find answers in the forward room before anyone is ready to deem them a true championship contender.

It would make sense if the new ownership group wanted to replace Pelinka with one of their own guys, but does that really make sense when a new front office would immediately be strapped for future assets that Pelinka traded away? The Lakers were already going to be facing a ton of pressure on the court this season, and that only multiplies with new owners coming in.

Lakers fans are understandably uneasy about all of this, but you can argue the franchise is in a better place today than it was a month ago. The weird split power dynamic between Walter and Jeanie Buss is gone, the familiar cronies that lined the family business under Jeanie have no stake in the game anymore, and the new owners are apparently flush with cash. While it’s totally understandable to have some discomfort with a Kushner as the lead owner, it doesn’t sound like his group made this deal to strip the team for parts.

I don’t think this is a Tom Dundon situation. Kushner and Iger wanted a premium brand. Iger saved Disney twice. Jerry Buss turned the Lakers into a premium brand, and his kids have essentially presided over its downfall since he died. The Showtime era Lakers died with Dr. Buss. The fact that the team can still attract mega-watt superstar power and win a championship after his passing is a testament to the brand having lasting appeal even after the kids tried to run it into the ground.

The short-term future of the Lakers will be decided more by if Matisse Thybulle and Ziaire Williams can shore up the wing defense than the sale. This season hangs in the balance with Doncic’s health, Austin Reaves’ potential ascension to All-Star status, and Kessler’s ability to be worth everything they traded for him. If the swing factors swing in the Lakers’ favor, I would expect Kushner and Iger to be happy to write Doncic a huge check for an extension, and to keep this team intact up to the same point where most every other NBA owner is willing to go right now — which stops at the second apron.

It’s for the best that the Lakers family ownership dynamic is finished. The NBA has simply outgrown that model, and the Buss kids were never going to stop fighting. Walter’s sale is a curveball, but the Lakers should have more stability with Kushner and Iger than they would have had with Walter under federal investigation. The leadership should be more professional than it ever was with the Buss kids in charge.

It remains to be seen how Kushner will run the team, and the first real question starts with Pelinka’s job as lead executive. Walter’s Dodgers spared no expense in making sure the entire organization was acquiring top of the market talent in every department, and not just on the field. Will Kushner be willing to eventually replace Pelinka with the best candidate available? Will Doncic be signed to a long-term extension by then?

I wouldn’t say the Lakers are in big trouble yet, but the stakes of this season just got even higher.