RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The Buss family's stewardship of the Los Angeles Lakers spanned 11 championships. Mark Walter's stewardship of the Lakers barely lasted 11 months. His initial agreement to buy majority control of the team came on June 18, 2025. His decision to sell that majority stake came less than 14 months later, with news arriving on Wednesday that Walter would sell his shares in the team to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner at a $12.5 billion valuation.
Walter's sale is perhaps the most stunning change of ownership in NBA history. The Lakers have been a franchise in transition over the past year. They not only let LeBron James leave in free agency to drastically change the roster, but they reshaped their front office and behind-the-scenes infrastructure in Walter's image. Now, we're left with more questions about the team's future than answers as the organization suddenly finds itself with new leadership for the second time in two summers.
So let's sift through this complicated sale. What are the biggest questions left to answer here?
Walter buying the Lakers was supposed to drastically change the manner in which the team operated. The Buss family was known for running the Lakers as sort of a mom-and-pop shop. They spent big on players and coaches, but were known for having a much leaner front office than most big-market teams.
Putting Walter at the helm was supposed to turn the Lakers into the NBA's equivalent of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Walter's far more successful baseball team. The Dodgers, winners of three World Series titles since 2020, are obviously known for spending big on players, but unlike the Lakers, that spending extended into areas like scouting, analytics, health and performance and all of the other invisible investments a team needs to make in order to win consistently.
Over the past year or so, the overhaul of the Laker front office had already begun. Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and former general manager Farhan Zaidi were consulted as part of that process. Rob Pelinka remains atop the team's basketball operations, but they fired most of the scouting staff. Rohan Ramadas was hired as an assistant general manager focusing on strategy and salary cap management, and the team was previously expected to hire a second assistant GM to head their drafting efforts. Former Dodgers executive Lon Rosen was hired as president of business operations for the Lakers less than six months ago.
Well, the Dodger-fication of the Lakers is now seemingly on hold since, you know, the Lakers are no longer owned by the same people as the Dodgers. So what exactly is that going to mean for the Lakers? We don't really know.
Though Walter became the majority owner of the team in 2025, he was never the team's governor. Jeanie Buss retained that title for a reported period of at least five years. Iger told The California Post that he and Kushner "have every intention to honor the agreement that was made between Mark and Jeanie," but added afterward, "If things change, they'll change."
Whether or not they do, official authority is not the only power that can be wielded in running a franchise. As majority owners, Iger and Kushner will have quite a bit of influence here with or without governorship. Remember, Buss' term as governor will eventually end. Her place within the organization afterward probably depends to some extent on how peacefully these parties coexist.
Before Walter became the team's majority owner, he had been a minority partner since 2021. The two had a working relationship. Neither Iger nor Kushner ever owned minority stakes in the Lakers. Iger, having run Disney and therefore ESPN, is well-known around the NBA world and presumably has relationships around the league that he can lean on. Kushner is a former minority owner of the Memphis Grizzlies and currently holds a stake in the Miami Heat , two well-run franchises. It's not hard to imagine that the two of them will have ideas about who they want leading their $12.5 billion franchise, and we don't yet know how that vision will mesh with the version of the team Walter and Buss had built.
For now, though, the dream of replicating what the Dodgers have built in the NBA seems to be dead. Neither Iger nor Kushner have the track record in sports ownership that Walter did, and it's hard to imagine they're willing to commit the financial resources to winning that he has because, simply, most sports owners don't. The truth here is probably going to land somewhere between the austerity of the Buss era and the seemingly limitless resources that Walter offered. Where exactly the new Lakers fall on that spectrum will play out over time.
The Lakers weren't the first team Iger and Kushner pursued, and I'm not talking about Iger's reported attempt to buy the Phoenix Suns a few years ago. "We were involved in pursuing the new franchise in Vegas," Iger told The California Post on Wednesday. When they learned of Walter's potential openness in selling the iconic Lakers, they pivoted. After all, the difference in price wasn't substantial.
"From what I understand Iger and Josh Kushner were in the expansion process trying to bid on the Vegas team. Those talks are going nuts right now" ESPN's Ramona Shelburne said on the Pat McAfee Show. "I think the number for the Vegas expansion team is climbing close to what Mark Walter paid for the Lakers last year, which was $10 billion." Throw in the cost of building a new arena in Vegas for an expansion team and the cost difference in buying the NBA's crown jewel franchise was ultimately negligible.
This, of course, raises some interesting questions about what exactly is going on with that expansion process. Is a 31st team now assured, given all of the reported interest in a Las Vegas team? As recently as February, Adam Silver said that relocation is "not on the table right now," so if that remains true, expansion is the only path to getting the NBA to Las Vegas. The NBA would not have allowed...
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