The five Buss siblings who voted to sell the family’s shares of the Lakers filed their formal opposition to team governor Jeanie Buss’ attempts to block the sale on Wednesday, calling Jeanie’s petition “legally and factually baseless” in a statement provided to The Times.
“While discussions among the siblings continue, their focus remains on facilitating the proposed transaction and the Trust’s participation in it, while ensuring that all beneficiaries, including Jeanie, are treated equally,” Jimmy, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse Buss said in the statement.
“Today’s filing is a necessary step to protect those interests and ensure the transaction proceeds on schedule.”
The five siblings voted in August to include the family’s 17.82% of the team in the sale from Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger. Jeanie immediately opposed her siblings’ vote, saying that the transaction would breach the family trust that states she and her co-trustees Janie and Joey must take reasonably available actions to maintain Jeanie’s role as the controlling governor of the team “on an annual basis during [her] lifetime.”
If the Buss Family Trust sells its remaining shares, Jeanie would be ineligible to serve on the board of governors because the NBA requires governors to own at least 15% of the franchise. Although the Buss family ended its more than 40 years of majority ownership of the team in 2025 by selling to Walter at a then-record $10-billion valuation, Jeanie was to remain the controlling governor for at least five years.
Jeanie and her attorneys filed a petition in L.A. Superior Court about two weeks after her siblings’ vote in which she argued their plan was void.
The siblings’ formal opposition claims Jeanie is attempting to prevent the sale “in order to protect her own personal interests” and her actions “constitute a breach of her fiduciary duties as a trustee.” The siblings believe that with five votes to sell, they have the right to proceed with their plan to sell the shares and distribute the proceeds because they have a two-thirds majority of the living children, as outlined in the trust.
With the latest sale from Walter to Kushner and Iger valued at $12.5 billion, a 17.82% share would be worth approximately $2.2 billion for the Buss siblings.
The news conference Thursday began with Lakers president of operations Rob Pelinka saying he wanted to “express gratitude” to LeBron James for the eight years he spent playing for Los Angeles before departing to Philadelphia as a free agent over the summer.
It didn’t take long for Pelinka to pivot into Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, and how they are now the leaders of the Lakers with James gone.
James informed the Lakers on June 30 that he had plans to play elsewhere, and thus began a new chapter for the Lakers. James, who signed with the 76ers, won an NBA championship with the Lakers in 2020. He led the Lakers to the Western Conference second round of the 2026 playoffs.
Over the course of his 23-year NBA career, James’ longest tenure had been with the Lakers.
And for that, Pelinka was thankful.
“I think before we get into the questions, it’s been a few weeks since I’ve last seen you guys. I thought it would be appropriate at the front to express gratitude for the LeBron era here,” Pelinka said. “Clearly, new team and new players, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today. But we as an organization are still grateful for the run that we had with him here. The Lakers have become — as they should — a perennial playoff team — won a championship, went to the Western Conference finals. It was a great era, and we’re grateful for it. I think it’s important to say that at the onset as we turn into a new chapter.”
Pelinka said he collaborated with Lakers coach JJ Redick to build a team around Doncic, using a three-pronged approach.
They wanted to re-sign Reaves, which the Lakers did at four years and $180 million, the largest contract ever for an undrafted player in NBA history.
They wanted to acquire a top-notch center, which the Lakers did by getting Walker Kessler from the Utah Jazz in a sign-and-trade deal. The Lakers sent two unprotected first-round picks and two first-round pick swaps to the Jazz for Kessler and then signed him to a four-year, $130-million contract.
They wanted to add quality depth, which the Lakers did by getting Quentin Grimes, Jaden Hardy, Collin Sexton, Matisse Thybulle, Ziaire Williams, Sandro Mamukelashvili and Kevon Looney.
Pelinka said this was the “thesis” on how they wanted to build the Lakers for the 2026-27 season.
“And there were three fundamental pillars of what we wanted to accomplish in the offseason: We wanted to retain Austin Reaves. That was a really big thing for us,” Pelinka said. “We wanted to find a way to acquire a franchise center and then we wanted to develop a roster of JJ Redick dribble-pass-shoot players that were younger and add depth to our roster. That was sort of our three-prong thesis basketball-wise for the offseason, and we felt like we accomplished all those things.
“Re-signing Austin, putting together a trade to acquire Walker Kessler, and then building out our team with young players that could dribble-pass-shoot, and have brought the average age of our roster to around 26 or 27, which lines up so perfectly with building a team around Luka Doncic. That’s what we’re here to talk about today, is our offseason and the excitement heading into this year.”
Lakers top executive Rob Pelinka, with reporters in the foreground, addresses the media at the team’s training facility in El Segundo on Thursday.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
Pelinka, who held the news conference with Redick by his side, was asked about the new Lakers ownership group of Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner, who purchased the franchise for a record $12.5 billion from Dodgers owner and Guggenheim Partners’ Mark Walter, who owned the Lakers for about a year. The deal hasn’t been finalized but is expected to be approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors.
“We have had introductory meetings with Bob and Josh, and those have been excellent,” Pelinka said. “With a pending transaction, we’re not at liberty to talk more about that under league rules. But we’ve had preliminary discussions with them that have been really, really positive. In terms of day-to-day, nothing’s changed. We’re operating with Lakers excellence.”
The biggest change is James not being with the Lakers.
After the Lakers were eliminated by the Oklahoma City Thunder in May, James expressed interest in re-signing with the team.
Pelinka even said the Lakers wanted James to retire with the franchise.
But that didn’t happen.
“Again, we’re grateful for the LeBron era,” Pelinka said. “I think the communications with him this offseason were held diplomatically, professionally and honestly. I’m so thankful for the partnership that we had that continued up until this summer when a decision was made for him to play for another team. It was done amicably, professionally, gracefully. We looked at the whole thing with gratitude, because it’s been an incredible era for us here.”
They mentioned “The Odyssey,” they talked about “Lord of the Rings,” they referenced “The Hobbit,” they cited the hero’s journey, they predicted a season filled with mythological tales of triumph.
What they didn’t promise was that their Lakers’ team would contend for a championship.
What they couldn’t mention was what will happen to them if they don’t.
In their annual pre-training camp news conference at their practice facility Thursday, Pelinka and Redick talked about fictional characters perhaps because the reality is too grim for words.
Their jobs are on the line with a rebuilding team that might not be good enough to save them, and no amount of cute Gandalf references can change that.
With new ownership, the Lakers’ braintrust no longer has the protection of the benevolent Buss family or the baseball-centric Mark Walter.
Here’s guessing Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner will want any excuse to put their own people in charge of their $12.5-billion investment. And if this clearly rebuilding Lakers team doesn’t quickly measure up to the brand that Iger and Kushner purchased, they’ll have that excuse.
In his nine full seasons as the Lakers’ basketball boss, Pelinka constructed the 2020 bubble championship team, but destroyed it soon thereafter and hasn’t won since.
In his two seasons as Lakers coach, Redick became the first Lakers coach to win 50-plus games in consecutive seasons since Phil Jackson. But Redick was always LeBron James’ choice, and now that James is gone — thank goodness! — Redick will have to prove himself all over again to the new guys.
He’s already off to an awkward start considering his answer to a question about who would join Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Walker Kessler in the starting lineup. He referenced the lame internet criticism that the Lakers couldn’t win because they were now led by too many white guys.
“I’m pretty confident in three of the spots,” he said. “The other two spots will not be two white guys.”
Um, OK.
Redick acknowledged that all those new potential starters — Quentin Grimes, Collin Sexton, Kevon Looney, Matisse Thybulle and others — can band together to turn this season into a mythological masterpiece.
“Part of the Hero’s journey is allies and gods,” he said, referring to stories about ordinary folk who are transformed by triumphant adventures. “And so I think if you look at “Lord of the Rings,” right? All the guys from “The Hobbit,” those guys had to be connected. They had to embrace the fact that they were allies, right? … You’re not gonna get through the journey without that. Or the journey’s gonna be even more tumultuous than it is because the reality is there will be ordeals and trials along the way.”
At this point Pelinka jumped in, saying, “So I’m a big Tolkien guy. Are you Samwise or Frodo?”
Answered Redick, “Uh, I’m simultaneously Samwise and Gandalf.”
Replied Pelinka: “Gandalf. That’s even better.”
Rob Pelinka (left), the Lakers general manager/president of basketball operations, speaks to the media with coach JJ Redick on Thursday at the team’s training facility in El Segundo.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
In San Antonio they’re talking about Wemby, in Oklahoma City they’re talking about SGA, and in Los Angeles they’re talking about … Frodo?
Tumultuous indeed. Welcome to life after LeBron, with Pelinka essentially starting the news conference by answering the biggest question of the summer — why did the James and Laker marriage fail?
Except he didn’t answer it.
“I’m so thankful for the partnership that we had that continued up until this summer when a decision was made for him to play for another team,” he said.
A decision was made by whom? James said it was him. It says here it was the Lakers, who needed to move him out if they were going to move ahead.
Pelinka didn’t elaborate, instead focusing on a popular reference that he sort of botched.
“We’ve talked about every season is a little bit like ‘The Odyssey,’ if anyone has seen the movie,” he said before someone corrected him. “Oh, it was actually a poem. Fair enough.”
The poem wasn’t this complicated.
“You launch a season, and there’s things that happen throughout that you can’t predict, but you have to stay together as a group and stay strong,” Pelinka said. “That’s a great theme for us.”
Pelinka will be going through his own Odyssey this season, as evidenced by his defense of his accomplishments.
“If you look at the teams that we’re wanting to go shoulder-to-shoulder with, the Thunder and the Spurs maybe in the West. … They had to lose many seasons to get high picks and we just don’t have the luxury of that here,” he said. “Again, the expectations are every year (to) win, get in the playoffs, make a run, and so we feel like we’ve been able to do that. As I’ve started, since I’ve been here in the leadership position, we’ve been a playoff team and we have to continue to do that.”
Redick was also playing defense, saying, “No one is a championship-level team on September 29. There’s not a team in the league that is a championship-level team. That is an ongoing process throughout the year. Rob talks about his job in that. Well, I have a job in that. Our players have a job in that. I’m confident we’re gonna develop as a team into a championship-level team this year. “
This season will live forever in Lakers folklore if they do.
There could be a medieval bloodbath if they don’t.
