With Lakers latest sale, is it finally time for the franchise to clean house?

When the NBA officially approved the $10 billion sale of the Lakers to a group led by Los Angeles Dodgers owner Mark Walter in October 2025, it was supposed to signal an end to the mom-and-pop shop era of a franchise once owned by the Buss family.

We figured the purchase would send an influx of financial resources into scouting and analyses that could better help the Lakers compete on par with their status as one of the league’s premier franchises. After all, the Lakers have, with the exception of one championship, largely been poorly run since the 2013 death of Dr. Jerry Buss.

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Only, Walter’s deal kept Jeanie Buss as the team’s lead governor for another five years, and Buss kept her hand-picked general manager, Rob Pelinka, in place, too. So, no changes to a leadership structure that has largely failed to build around its stars.

Now that Josh Kushner and Bob Iger have reportedly agreed to purchase the Lakers from Walter for an American sports franchise record $12.5 billion — less than a year after the team’s most recent record sale was completed — is it time to officially clean house, removing Buss as governor and Pelinka as the head of basketball operations?

It could be easily argued Lakers president of basketball operations and general manager Rob Pelinka hasn’t been very good at his job. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)

(Luke Hales via Getty Images)

Let’s run through their track record.

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As the Buss family was embroiled in a legal battle over controlling rights to the team, the Lakers had their first big chance to spend once Kobe Bryant’s contract came off the books, and they couldn’t even secure a free-agency meeting with Kevin Durant in the summer of 2016. That’s how sad of a state the Lakers were in in a post-Bryant era.

Instead, the Lakers spent on Luol Deng and Timofey Mozgov, setting the franchise back several years. They were so bad during that stretch that they picked second in three successive drafts — 2015, 2016 and 2017 — landing D’Angelo Russell, Brandon Ingram and Lonzo Ball, all of whom failed to make the playoffs on their rookie contracts.

In February 2017,…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/with-lakers-latest-sale-is-it-finally-time-for-the-franchise-to-clean-house-183030332.html

Author : Ben Rohrbach

Publish date : 2026-08-12 18:30:00

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