Buss family sells stake in Lakers, ending an era for one of the NBA’s biggest franchises
Kushner and Iger bought control of the Lakers from Mark Walter last week in a shocking transaction. Walter, who also owns the Los Angeles Dodgers, purchased the team in 2025 at a valuation of $10 billion. He is currently under federal investigation for possible financial fraud. The Buss family has had a stake in the Lakers for nearly five decades, with Dr. Jerry Buss becoming the team’s owner in May 1979. The team has won 11 NBA championships in that 47-year span.
When the Buss family originally sold the franchise to Walter last summer, Jeanie Buss was allowed to remain the team’s governor. Jeanie took over as governor after her father’s death in 2013. NBA rules allow someone to be a team governor only if they own at least 15% of the team, which the Buss family retained despite selling majority control to Walter. When Walter became owner in 2025, the NBA said in a statement that Buss would remain governor for at least a five-year term.
Just hours after it became known that Kushner and Iger would buy the team, Iger gave an interview to The California Post in which he said the plan was for Buss to remain governor, but that “if things change, they will change.” Now that the Buss family no longer owns the 15% of the team needed to retain the governorship, Iger or Kushner will presumably become the team’s governor and lead the team going forward.
Why did the Buss family decide to sell now?
The Buss family trust requires four of the six siblings to vote in favor of selling the team. The initial sale of majority control from the Buss family to Walter was driven by Jeanie, according to an extensive ESPN report from January. That sale allowed Jeanie to retain the leadership of the team. However, younger brothers Joey and Jesse Buss, who had played prominent roles in the Lakers’ basketball operations, were later fired.
Now, according to Yaron Weitzman, all five siblings besides Jeanie (Joey, Jesse, Jim, Johnny and Janie) executed the tag-along clause in the family trust, indicating that they wanted to sell the family’s stock. A 17.8% stake in a $12.5 billion sale would be worth $2.25 billion.
According to ESPN, the Lakers’ senior vice president of finance called an emergency meeting of the Buss family last week “to discuss dissolving the family trust and seeking unanimous approval to block all family shares for four years under a new trust.” That meeting was held the day before news of the Kushner/Iger deal broke and reportedly made no mention of the pending sale.
The Lakers have been one of the most successful and prominent franchises in American professional sports since Jerry Buss purchased the team in 1979. Under the Buss family’s ownership, they won five titles in the 1980s, three in a row from 1999 to 2001, back-to-back titles in 2009 and 2010, and the championship in the NBA bubble in 2020.
Buss’ legacy
The Lakers won 11 titles in a four-decade span between 1980 and 2020
The Lakers under Walter had spent most of the past 14 months integrating with their other local professional sports franchise, the more recently successful Dodgers. Now, not only is Walter gone, but so is the Buss family, leaving Kushner and Iger to run the team as they see fit. It’s unclear what exactly that means for the team’s basketball future, but it is the end of an era for the purple and gold.
