It’s been quite the summer for Lakers jealousy, hasn’t it?
For example, in July, Bleacher Report left Kobe Bryant — the fourth-leading scorer in NBA history — off its Top 10 all-time player list. In June, when the Buss family sold the franchise to Mark Walter for a historic $10 billion, Lakers haters immediately took to social media to say which teams were worth more. Now we are in August, and every NBA TV show and podcast has a segment to address the comments Philadelphia 76ers executive Daryl Morey made to the Athletic about the Lakers’ 2020 NBA championship against the Miami Heat:
“Had the Rockets won the title, I absolutely would have celebrated it as legitimate, knowing the immense effort and resilience required.… Yet, everyone I speak to around the league privately agrees that it doesn’t truly hold up as a genuine championship.”
Given the historic circumstances of the COVID-19 pandemic that year, to view that championship as “less than” because teams did not travel during it and fans were not present is akin to discounting NFL championships or World Series titles won during World War II because the rosters were thinner because of enlistments.
Morey suggested that victory should come with an asterisk as if the playoffs during a once-in-a-century global pandemic were not as challenging as in typical years. Different dynamic, yes — but easier? He has since walked his comments back, but you know what they say about genies and bottles. Besides, it’s not as if he’s alone in his Lakers disrespect. There are plenty of fans and former players who are quick to point out what the team did not do in that postseason because they don’t appreciate what that championship required.
Beginning with courage.
It’s been nearly five years since the Lakers won title No. 17 inside the $200-million logistics behemoth referred to as the Bubble, so maybe some of us forgot the details. Infectious disease experts, the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, the league office, the players’ union, ESPN and many other corporations all came together during a time when we had far more questions about COVID than answers.
From when NBA play stopped in March 2020 to when play inside the Bubble began that July, the country had lost more than 140,000 people to the disease. When bubble play ended in October, it was above 206,000, and many cities were running out of places to store the dead.
Far too often we forget that fame and fortune do not protect a person from problems or heartache. We forget that being a professional athlete does not protect you from the rest of the shared human experience. All-Star center Karl-Anthony Towns lost his mother to COVID that April and seven other relatives over the course of the pandemic. Towns, who turns 30 in November, was himself hospitalized in early 2021 because of the virus.
You’re not supposed to put an asterisk on a sports championship won during the worst of times. You’re supposed to use an exclamation point to honor the mental and emotional dexterity it took. The months of isolation — away from family and friends, away from the routines that made them the athletes they are. Daily testing to guarantee the safety of other players as well as coaches and administrative staff. And while not having to travel to a hostile arena nullified the “road game” in the playoffs, it also took away “home court” from a Lakers team that had the best record in the Western Conference. A team that had just beat the other two title favorites — the Milwaukee Bucks and the Los Angeles Clippers — less than a week before the world shut down.
One day, Morey is going to look back on his comments about the Lakers title in the Bubble with shame. Not because he’s wrong in reporting the disrespect others in the league have expressed but because he chose to give that rhetoric oxygen. Morey and others have long had such jealousy of the Lakers, but this was the summer they turned petty.
Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter, through his TWG Global company, agreed to purchase a majority ownership stake in the Lakers last week and released information about the sale on Wednesday in a statement announcing the deal would be completed later this year.
When news broke that Walter would take controlling interest of the Lakers from the Buss family at a valuation of $10 billion, we reached out to Magic Johnson about his thoughts on the matter. Speaking from a yacht off the coast of Croatia, here’s what the Lakers legend had to say about Walter, Jeanie Buss and the sale:
About Walter’s approach
“Mark is a man who cares and loves winning and will always care about investing the money in making not only the team better but the organization better. He’s somebody who is family-driven. He’s a great man.
“You saw what happened to the Dodgers once Mark and all of us took over.”
On the Buss family selling to Walter
“One thing that Jeanie [Buss] was going to do is put [the franchise] in the right hands. If she was going to sell, it had to be the right person, and Mark Walter is the right person to take over and lead us for the next 30, 40 years. So, this is the best news that could have happened for all Laker fans across the world. Mark has had his eye on the Lakers for a long time. That’s why he bought [Philip] Anschutz’s [minority ownership] piece first and then he was sitting there, and Jeanie knew this.
“If she ever wanted to sell, he wanted to be the one that bought the team. And they formed a friendship, because that had to happen first. Jeanie had to know that he was going to do just like her father [Dr. Jerry Buss] did and just like she did and that was to make sure that he would do great things in the community as well, like both her father and her have been able to do and also educate him on how much the Lakers mean to not only the Laker fans but to the NBA and to the world.”
On the sale of the team
“I think the [Buss] boys were ready before. I think they wanted to cash out. We’re seeing this happening all around sports. ‘Sometimes, let somebody else have it.’ We saw Mark Cuban do it. Boston did it. So, you are seeing it happen and maybe they [Buss family] said, ‘We just want the money and go on and live out our lives.’”
“Mark loves being a part of Los Angeles and now he’s got the premier baseball team and now the premier basketball team.”
On Walter’s success
“The one thing great about Mark is that he’ll hire the best people. He will always have really good people around him to help him bring back championships to Los Angeles and to Lakers fans. I’m excited. This couldn’t have gone any better for Laker fans and the Buss family and the NBA. The NBA knows Mark. It couldn’t have gone better for the Buss family because Mark is a caretaker. You got to be a caretaker, a great caretaker.
“What did Mark do for the Dodgers? He’s been a great caretaker of the brand and of the team. How much money he put into Dodger Stadium. He’s always willing to make the big and bold moves to win. But Mark is a visionary. So, he’s probably already got a vision for the Laker organization and for the team. So, that’s the great thing about him.
“The funny thing is, his personality is just like Jeanie. You won’t see him out front a lot, just like now he’s not out in front of the Dodgers. So, people need to understand that. That’s not his personality. Just like Jeanie’s personality. She hasn’t been out front.”
About Jeanie Buss and the sale
“You saw Mark let Jeanie stay on the Board of Governors. That was smart. One thing that is smart about Jeanie is she was never going to say, ‘Oh, the Lakers are up for sale! Anybody can own them.’ That’s not who she is. She wasn’t going to put it in anybody’s hands.
“And I think because of the success of the Dodgers and how he has run the organization, now it’s easy for the fans. We already know him. We’ve seen his work already. We’ve seen what he’s been able to do, led us to a couple of World Series [wins] and going to the World Series four times. That’s success right there. That’s what Laker fans are looking for.
“He’s got a track record. This is what Laker fans would want, somebody that they can trust, just like they trusted Dr. Buss. They trusted Jeanie because of her father saying, ‘This is who I want in charge.’ So, this is beautiful for all Laker fans.”
Upon hearing the news
“I’m going crazy too. I was screaming all over this yacht, because I know how great Mark is and how great of a man he is and how smart he is. He’s got a big heart.”
The story is so good, so rich, that Hollywood couldn’t resist.
The Lakers, a golden brand. The stars on the basketball court. The celebrities on the sidelines. The spotlight on the show flying up and down the floor 24 seconds at a time.
HBO made a series. Books have been authored. Documentaries have been filmed. No hyperbole is too outrageous.
Magic Johnson and Larry Bird helped save basketball. The Lakers were the greatest show in town. The highs and lows, the devastation and the jubilation, made them iconic.
And the ringmasters for the last 45 years have been the Buss family.
That era culminated Wednesday when a majority of Buss’ six children agreed to sell controlling interest of the franchise to Mark Walter for a record price — a $10-billion valuation that’s the highest in pro sports history.
The initial reaction to the news — a sale that shocked the Lakers’ biggest partners inside and outside of the NBA — centered on what it will mean for the organization. Will Walter and his partners pour the same financial resources that they’ve deployed to turn the Dodgers into the best team in baseball? How will their capital boost the weakest areas of the franchise’s infrastructure? What will happen next?
We don’t know for sure. We do, though, know what just wrapped — an era of pro-sports ownership unrivaled in success and melodrama.
The start
Dr. Jerry Buss wasn’t a physician — the title came from a degree in chemistry at USC. And the money? It didn’t come from science. It came from real estate. But Buss was always one to sense an opportunity, and Jack Kent Cooke’s record-breaking divorce settlement meant that he was about to capitalize on one.
In 1979, Buss scrambled to put together a wild business deal — properties and cash moving between Buss, third parties and Cooke before the self-made man ended up with The Forum, the Los Angeles Kings and, in what would be his legacy, the Los Angeles Lakers. The price was $67.5 million.
The timing was impeccable. The team would win a coin flip and with it the right to select Johnson with the No. 1 overall pick in the draft. Buss’ and Johnson’s relationship helped lay the groundwork for the player-empowerment era that dominates the current NBA, Buss realizing faster than his peers that the biggest and best players were what drove the league’s success.
In his first season as owner, the Lakers won an NBA title, kicking off a decade-long battle with the Boston Celtics that helped the NBA move from the margins of pro sports to the mainstream.
In this 1979 photo, Lakers owner Jerry Buss is shown with children (clockwise from top left) Janie, Johnny, Jim and Jeanie.
(Gunther / mptvimages.com)
Yet it was more than Johnson leading fastbreaks, flashing smiles and dishing no-look passes. It was the merging of sports and entertainment that helped define what fans now experience.
In 1979, shortly after purchasing the Lakers, Buss commissioned the first Laker Girls dance team. The Forum Club became one of the city’s hottest nightspots. The games were more than athletic contests. They were events.
For the first 12 seasons Buss owned the team, they never won fewer than 54 games in an 82-game season. Titles came in 1982 against the 76ers, 1985 and 1987 against the hated Celtics and 1988 against Detroit.
The Lakers built one of basketball’s most unstoppable machines — Jerry West in the front office, Pat Riley on the sideline and Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Byron Scott and Michael Cooper flying on the break.
As Buss became one of the NBA’s most powerful figures, his children were at his side, learning the business. His daughter, Jeanie, famously helped organize events at the Forum. The family’s true promoter spirit couldn’t be suppressed — soccer, indoor tennis, roller hockey, the Buss family tried it all.
Even after Johnson’s stunning retirement after his HIV diagnosis, the Lakers missed the playoffs just once before they fully reloaded, first with Shaquille O’Neal, then with Kobe Bryant and finally with Phil Jackson.
Nothing, though, would last forever.
The transition
In 2005, The Times’ Hall of Fame basketball writer, Mark Heisler, wrote about Buss’ succession plan coming into focus.
“Jerry Buss wanted a crowd-pleasing basketball team the movie stars could relate to but might have gone too far,” Heisler wrote. “He wound up with the greatest floating soap opera in sports, and basketball was almost beside the point.”
Still, it was Buss’ legacy.
“I just can’t visualize myself walking away, relinquishing control,” Buss said in a 2002 story in The Times. “My relationship with this team is a lifelong marriage.”
The thing about family businesses, it turns out, is that family drama is always at play.
A Sports Illustrated feature in 1998 painted a story of jealousy and unease that seemed prophetic.
Kobe Bryant, left, holds the Larry O’Brian Trophy as Shaquille O’Neal holds the NBA Finals MVP trophy in 2000.
(AFP / Getty Images)
As Buss scaled back his involvement, Jeanie took on a greater role in the business side of the franchise while son Jim became a basketball executive. And the Lakers kept on winning.
Tensions between O’Neal, Bryant and Jackson ended with the dissolution of another dynasty after three consecutive championships. Belief in Bryant led to two more rings once they reunited him with Jackson and added Pau Gasol to the mix.
Through it all, the Lakers remained a family business in its truest sense, Buss’ youngest sons Joey and Jesse learning the ropes in business and scouting in the same way his older children did.
Jeanie‘s romantic relationship with Jackson, at best, complicated things in the organization. Still, she was always the one her father intended to lead the organization, beginning when Buss put her in charge of the team’s indoor tennis franchise when she was just 19.
“I figured, ‘If Dr. Buss [she refers to him by his preferred title] says he thinks I can do it, I must be able to do it,’” Jeanie told The Times in 2002.” If he never doubted me, how could anyone else? It was only later that I thought, ‘What the hell was I doing?’”
In 2005, son Jim began to take on a bigger role in the organization, becoming the team’s vice president of player personnel.
“When I hear somebody say, ‘Are you qualified?’ I’m like, ‘If you had eight years of Jerry West plus Mitch Kupchak and all the talented scouts working on a daily basis tutoring you, I don’t know what other credentials you could have,’” Jim said then.
When Buss died in 2013 from complications of cancer, all six of his children held titles with the Lakers.
“Jerry Buss helped set the league on the course it is on today,” then-NBA commissioner David Stern said. “Remember, he showed us it was about ‘Showtime,’ the notion that an arena can become the focal point for not just basketball, but entertainment. He made it the place to see and be seen.”
While Buss was living, the Lakers missed the playoffs only twice. In the six seasons after his death, the Lakers never won more than 37 games.
Something had to change.
The fallout
Bryant took a fateful step at the end of a game late in the 2013 season, his Achilles tendon rupturing in his left leg. He miraculously made two free throws before heading to the locker room — a moment codifying him as an all-time Los Angeles legend and a moment, it turned out, that signaled the good times were about to end.
The following season, coach Mike D’Antoni’s Lakers won just 27 games, Nick Young leading the Lakers in scoring and Bryant playing only six times. After the year, Jim Buss told The Times that he saw a pathway forward and he told his family the same in a meeting earlier in 2014.
“I was laying myself on the line by saying, ‘If this doesn’t work in three to four years, if we’re not back on the top’ — and the definition of top means contending for the Western Conference, contending for a championship — ‘then I will step down because that means I have failed,’” he said. “I don’t know if you can fire yourself if you own the team … but what I would say is I’d walk away and you guys figure out who’s going to run basketball operations because I obviously couldn’t do the job.
“There’s no question in my mind we will accomplish success. I’m not worried about putting myself on the line.”
In 2015, the Lakers won only 21 games. In 2016, the team lost a franchise-most 65 times against a franchise-worst 17 wins. In 2017, they were headed to another season in which they would be more than 30 games under .500 when Jeanie fired Jim and Kupchak, the team’s general manager.
They were replaced with Bryant’s former agent, Rob Pelinka, and Johnson.
Jeanie Buss applauds the Lakers’ efforts during the team’s 2010 NBA championship ring ceremony at Staples Center.
(Chris Carlson / Associated Press)
Shortly after the decision, Jim, along with his brother Johnny, tried to remove Jeanie from the team’s board of directors, sparking a legal feud that included Jeanie filing a restraining order while she wrested control of the team.
“I must also point out that Jim has already proven to be completely unfit even in an executive vice president of basketball operations role and I recently had to replace him,” Jeanie said in court documents.
The Lakers signed LeBron James in 2018, traded for Anthony Davis and built a title team in 2020, the family’s biggest success in the years following their father’s passing.
With Jeanie firmly in charge, brother Joey helped run one of the league’s most-respected developmental teams in the South Bay Lakers — a program that helped develop players such as Alex Caruso. Jesse Buss and his scouting department found value in late first-round picks like Josh Hart and Kyle Kuzma as well as an undrafted star in Austin Reaves.
In 2022, Jeanie produced a documentary for Hulu that dealt with heaps of the family’s drama, and Wednesday’s sale not coming from a majority — and not unanimous — vote again means that not everyone is on the same page.
While the Buss family will retain minority ownership, things will never be the same in the organization. The influx of money, of modernization, of more corporate structure could help the Lakers on the court.
But what they were under the Buss family, they’ll never be again.
“I really tried to create a Laker image, a distinct identity,” Jerry Buss once said. “I think we’ve been successful. I mean, the Lakers are pretty damn Hollywood.”
For 46 years it’s been a wonderful ride, the sweetest of sagas, the Buss family treating the Lakers like their precocious child, nurturing, embracing, empowering, transforming them into arguably this country’s most celebrated sports franchise.
But it’s time.
It’s time to give their baby to somebody who won’t be burdened by the family ties or deep friendships that have increasingly interfered with the chasing of championships.
It’s time to hand their beloved to somebody with enough money to keep it strong and enough vision to keep it relevant.
Yes! It’s them! They’re here! Welcome, welcome, welcome! Come on in! Make yourself at home! History has been waiting for you!
This is really happening, the majority ownership of the Lakers is really being sold to Dodgers chairman Mark Walter and his TWG Global group at a franchise valuation of $10 billion, making it the richest transaction in sports history.
To Los Angeles sports fans, it’s worth even more.
For the future of professional sports in this city, it’s priceless.
This is the best thing to happen to the Southland’s sports landscape since, well, the last time Walter’s TWG Global group bought something this big.
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It was 2012, and they bought the Dodgers, and just look what they’ve done with them.
Since 2013, Walter’s team has been in the playoffs every year, won their division 11 of those 12 years, appeared in four World Series and won two of them.
Since 2013, the Lakers have won one title in their only Finals appearance during that period while making the playoffs only half the time.
Mad respect to the Buss family, who oversaw 11 championships while providing the stage for greats from Magic Johnson to Kobe Bryant to LeBron James. But since the death of patriarch Jerry Buss in 2013, the organization has lacked a sustained championship vision and effective championship culture.
Everybody loves Jeanie Buss, who will continue in her role as Lakers governor, but she has grown increasingly out of touch with the demands of the modern game.
Where contending teams are now led by analytics-driven minds, she would rely on old friends like Linda and Kurt Rambis and Rob Pelinka, who became part of the family by being Kobe Bryant’s agent.
Where contending teams increasingly relied on younger players, Buss’ Lakers were always tied to aging superstars, their title hopes crashing around a hobbled Bryant and now buckling under a slowly eroding James.
Lakers owner Jerry Buss with children (clockwise from top left) Jeanie, Johnny, Jim and Janie in 1979.
(Gunther / mptvimages.com)
Since Jerry Buss’ death, the vision-less Lakers have wandered through the NBA desert in search of a strong leader who could build for sustained success.
In Walter’s group, they have that leader.
If the Dodgers are any indication, the Lakers are in for the sort of massive facelift that would make even a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon blush.
There will be money poured into the Lakers’ woefully small infrastructure, more money for coaches, more money for scouts, more money for trainers, more money for the amenities at Crypto.com Arena.
Who knows, maybe even more money for a new arena eventually? Don’t scoff, the Dodgers spent more than $500 million just to put a shine on Dodger Stadium, they will dig deep for that fan experience. They will dig deep for everything.
If there’s an insanely expensive but wildly successful general manager candidate out there — former Golden State guru Bob Myers comes to mind — the new Lakers will buy him.
Jeanie Buss attends a game between the Lakers and the Milwaukee Bucks at Crypto.com Arena on March 20.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
If there’s an experienced but costly head coaching candidate hanging around, the new Lakers will nab him.
Although they will be somewhat constrained by the salary cap, the new Lakers will go deep into any tax to buy the best players as long as they can retain their draft picks.
The Dodgers are about winning every year, not just the next year, so expect the new Lakers to covet the future as much as the present.
This is good news for young Luka Doncic. This is not such good news for James.
The Buss family always vowed to do whatever it takes to keep James happy and allow him to retire here. The new Lakers won’t be so sentimental. James hasn’t signed on for next season yet, and maybe this change of ownership changes what once appeared to be a slam dunk.
The new Lakers won’t have the rich heart of the old Lakers. But they also won’t have the old destructive loyalties.
The new Lakers will be only about winning, something Jerry Buss understood and amplified, something which has been sadly lost since his passing.
Lakers owner Jerry Buss celebrates with the Larry O’Brien Trophy after the team’s 1980 NBA championship victory.
(NBAE / Getty Images)
The Buss family was good for Los Angeles, and their stewardship of one of this city’s crown sports jewels should be celebrated.
But it’s time, and it’s perfect that their neighbors down the road have decided to be the ones to spruce up the place.
Before this sale, the only thing the Dodgers and Lakers shared occurred after victories, when both team’s sound systems would blare, “I Love L.A.”
Now they share a championship bank account, a championship vision, and a championship commitment.
The Buss family’s decision to sell its majority stake in the Lakers to Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter sent shockwaves through L.A. on Wednesday.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was among those surprised by the development. Speaking to reporters before his team’s game against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium, Roberts shared his thoughts on what Walter could bring to the Lakers.
Question: What’s your reaction to the deal?
“Obviously he’s had some kind of stake the last few years or whatever. He’s really committed to the city of Los Angeles in various ways. Sports is something that he’s very passionate about, and certainly Los Angeles sports. I think it’s a very exciting day for the Lakers, for the city of Los Angeles. And I think speaking from [the perspective of] a Dodger employee, he’s very competitive. He’s going to do everything he can to produce a championship-caliber team every single year and make sure the city feels proud of the Lakers and the legacy that they’ve already built with the Buss family.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts smiles before a game against the Texas Rangers in April.
(Julio Cortez / Associated Press)
When did you learn that about him?
“I would say probably seven, eight, nine years ago, just having a conversation with him as far as how much he enjoyed spending time in Los Angeles, and a lot of low-hanging fruit in the sense of what this city could be, already is, and can be. He wanted to infuse kind of his intelligence, his resources. He just wanted more skin in the game. That’s just speaking for him. But he’s obviously a very smart person.”
How have you seen him be competitive
“I think he does everything he can to provide resources, support. He wants to win. He feels that the fans, the city, deserves that. I think that’s never lost. It’s more challenging us always to, how do we become better and not complacent or stagnant to continue to stay current with the market and the competition to win not only now but for as far as we can see out.”
What makes a good owner?
“I think a good owner in my eyes is a person that lets the people that he hires do their jobs. He does a great job of letting Stan and Andrew and Gomer, all those guys, Lon, do their jobs right. But also kind of holding us all accountable, and also providing resources needed. In this case, players, to field a team that’s warranted of a championship-caliber team every year. Also, doing stuff for charity and appreciating not only the baseball side but just as important, the business side. He invests a lot of resources in that as well. I think that that’s kind of all-encompassing of what I’ve been fortunate to be around.”
Does this mean you’re sitting courtside?
“Yes. (Laughter). I’m sure a lot of people are hitting Mark up, but I might add myself to the list.”
