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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.
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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…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/lakers-better-hands-now-just-161128524.html
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Publish date : 2026-08-18 16:11:00
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