ownership

For more than four decades, the Lakers were a family-run business. The sibling rivalries still remain.

Jeanie Buss is fighting back after her siblings reportedly voted to sell the family’s remaining stake in the Lakers on Monday. The team’s governor, Buss sent a letter through her attorney to her brothers’ attorneys stating any votes to sell the family’s remaining 17.8% stake in the team to new majority owners Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner are void because the sale cannot be completed without approval of the other trustees: Jeanie and her younger siblings, Janie and Joey.

ESPN reported Monday that the six Buss family siblings, who took over team ownership after their father, Jerry Buss, died in 2013, are selling their shares of the Lakers to Iger and Kushner following a family vote. Iger, the longtime Disney chief executive, and Kushner, a venture capitalist and entrepreneur, agreed last week to buy Mark Walter’s controlling stake of the Lakers for a record valuation of $12.5 billion.

The transactions still need to be approved by the NBA board of governors. Jeanie Buss, who was to remain the Lakers governor for at least five years after Walter’s purchase of the team was approved last October, no longer would be eligible to serve on the board if the Buss family sells its shares. Governors are required to own at least a 15% stake.

“The co-trustees are bound to vote the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. shares to ensure that the minimum 15% ownership requirement is maintained in order to ensure that Jeanie Buss may remain controlling owner,” the letter from Buss’ attorney reads, citing a 2017 court ruling outlining Jeanie Buss’ role. “Any attempt by the co-trustees to do otherwise and any attempt to aid or abet the co-trustees as such would constitute a breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and be in contempt of court.”

The trust was revised in 2017 after a series of legal battles between Jeanie and her older brothers, Johnny and Jim. It stipulated that co-trustees “would take all actions reasonably available to them, including voting the trust’s shares to ensure that [Jeanie Buss] is elected as the controlling owner of the Lakers on an annual basis during [her] lifetime.”

The statement to ESPN attributed to the Buss family regarding the sale read: “We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction. We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles; but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.” ESPN didn’t report a price for the shares.

The Buss family has owned the team since 1979, when Jerry Buss bought the franchise, the Forum and the Los Angeles Kings for $67.5 million. The family patriarch leveraged Hollywood glamour with entertainment spectacle to elevate the Lakers into an internationally recognized brand. The NBA’s biggest stars shone brightest in L.A.; Jerry West, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant helped pile up 10 championships under Buss. The Laker Girls became a harbinger of sports dance teams to come. Celebrities flocked to the courtside seats. Books and TV shows told the team’s Hollywood story.

Each of Buss’ six children — Jeanie, Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse — held titles in the organization. Jeanie was her father’s hand-picked successor. She fought to maintain her position against Johnny and Jim, who tried to reorganize the board of directors to push Jeanie out in 2017. She eventually ousted them from team operations. Joey and Jessie, the two youngest, were fired by the new owners last November. Joey was the team’s alternate governor and vice president of research and development, and Jesse was the assistant general manager. Janie held an administrative role directing the team’s charitable services.

The booming sports business quickly caught up to the team that once held the attention of the city with the league’s biggest stars, iconic “Showtime” style and old Hollywood feel. The Lakers slogged through a six-year playoff drought from 2013-19. The team started falling behind in resources and revenue compared to other organizations that controlled their own arenas and could maximize alternative revenue streams. The Buss family voted to relinquish a majority ownership of the team last year, bringing in Walter, who also owns the Dodgers.

Walter then shockingly flipped the NBA’s crown jewel franchise for a profit of $2.5 billion last week. The investment mogul who is under federal investigation for unpaid loans agreed to sell his stake in the Lakers to Kushner and Iger. Kushner is a co-founder of Thrive Capital, which started a permanent holdings company, Thrive Eternal, this year to invest in sports and cultural brands. Iger is the longtime Disney CEO who already owns Southland soccer club Angel City FC and previously flirted with NFL ownership by trying to build a stadium in Carson before the project ultimately went to the Stan Kroenke-led group that built SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

Before including the Buss shares, the deal for the Lakers’ majority stake already was the largest sum paid for any professional sports franchise, surpassed only by Walter’s $10-billion purchase of the team. It still sits below Sportico’s estimate for the most valuable franchise, with the outlet listing the Dallas Cowboys’ valuation at $15.5 billion.

Minority stakeholders Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, who also owns the Los Angeles Times Media Group; real estate billionaire Ed Roski; and Walter business partner Todd Boehly own about 14% of the Lakers, according to Sportico.

How Iger and Kushner will finance the Lakers deal is unclear.

When the duo agreed to buy Walter’s share last week, Kushner and Iger released a statement that in part praised the Buss family’s work with the Lakers.

“We have immense respect for the leadership and vision of Jerry and Jeanie Buss,” the statement read. “Our long-term commitment is to build on that foundation, compete at the highest level, and serve this extraordinary team, its fans, and the city of Los Angeles.”

Manchester Super Giants (MSG) rebranded from the Originals, also changing their team logo and colours, after RPSG group – led by Indian billionaire Sanjiv Goenka – bought a 70% stake in the franchise, with Lancashire having 30% ownership.

Goenka’s Indian Premier League (IPL) side Lucknow Super Giants have yet to reach that competition’s final since being founded in 2022, but his Hundred investment has resulted in immediate success as Jos Buttler’s side sealed the Manchester franchise’s first title for either men or women.

Lancashire chief executive Daniel Gidney, also on the board of MSG, says there’s no choice but to be bold in a rebrand.

“If you’re trying to launch a new brand in a new market, in the UK particularly, in a city that is dominated by football, you’ve got to go big and loud,” Gidney told BBC Sport.

One daring ‘brand activation’ resulted in almost 30,000 free shirts being given to Super Giants fans.

“To give everybody a free jersey who bought a ticket is extraordinarily different,” said Gidney.

“You can’t normally do it because a kit manufacturer will go, ‘No, no, no. I’ve got to sell that kit for £60-80.’

“You never get anything for free. It’s had a massive impact, much more than I thought.”

The decision was made this first year to forego a potentially lower kit deal for the opportunity to build the MSG brand, get fans in the team colours, and then strike a more lucrative supplier deal in years to come.

But how does that benefit Lancashire more broadly? The county’s merchandise continues to be sold at Old Trafford on matchdays, while at the moment you won’t find MSG products in the club shop.

Gidney says Lancashire were able to “retain effectively 50% merchandise arrangements” with MSG, who they can use as a “bit of a pilot” – possibly bringing some of what they learn into the T20 Blast competition.

The franchise will now hope to have acquired new fans and take momentum from their first on-field triumph, while they also pocket £275,000 in prize money.

They were dealt the blow of losing captain Aiden Markram halfway through the group stage as he returned to South Africa for personal reasons, but Buttler seamlessly stepped up, while the appointment of Tom Moody as their director was another savvy decision.

Former Australia player Moody was at the helm for Oval Invincibles’ previous dominance in the men’s Hundred, with three consecutive titles. He will hope for further success at Old Trafford alongside compatriot Justin Langer, hired as coach from this season, the same role he has at Lucknow.

There are positives for their women’s side too, who just missed out on a knockout spot, but look likely to be in a good place if they can keep legendary former Australia captain Meg Lanning in charge.

So instead of the Dodgerfication of the Lakers, we’re getting the Disneyfication of the Lakers.

Hakuna Matata?

Yes, it’s weird and distressing, watching billionaires play catch with our ballclubs.

But this high-stakes game of hot potato that resulted in Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner acquiring the Lakers for $12.5 billion from Mark Walter less than a year after the Dodgers owner bought the NBA team?

For the Lakers, it really could end happily ever after.

Because we’re realizing you probably shouldn’t put all your proverbial eggs — or both of a city’s most beloved sports teams — in one guy’s basket. Especially if that one guy happens to be at the center of a federal loan investigation.

And if all it took, really, to get Walter to relinquish his ownership of the Lakers was $2.5 billion more than the reported figure he paid for them, then he wasn’t the right owner for the franchise anyway.

He wasn’t actually going to spin blue into purple and gold.

And Disney did give us some pretty great stories under Iger, didn’t it?

A native New Yorker, Iger, 75, grew up a Knicks fan. But he has also long been an L.A. basketball fan — though he has identified as a Clippers supporter. (Sorry, Clips, I think you’re down a fan.)

Lakers great Magic Johnson said he’s known Iger since the Showtime era, and gushed in an interview Wednesday with The Times’ Broderick Turner: “The great thing for Laker fans is Bob Iger loves basketball, loves the Lakers and I think that we couldn’t have a better person.

“Somebody that don’t know the Lakers, the tradition, that don’t know the city, that don’t know the passion that the fans have for the Lakers here in L.A.? Then I would have been like, ‘Oh man. They gotta learn all that.’

Bob Iger, then chief executive of Disney, addresses the media during the Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge media event in 2019.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“Well there’s no learning curve for Bob.”

And Angelenos know Iger. We don’t know Kushner except for his family ties. But Iger, we do.

Walter isn’t selling the Lakers to some rich guys without any L.A. cred. He’s selling to a basketball fan whom we’ve seen courtside at Lakers games. Someone who joined us in sharing our heartbreak on social media when Kobe Bryant died in 2020, calling him “a friend and a fan of ours, full of life and taken from us too soon.”

We recognize Iger; he’s the Disney guy. We know him for his successful tenures as chief executive of that beloved company, which were highlighted by innovative storytelling, savvy investment and expansion — including into sports. We know he helped turn ESPN into a TV juggernaut.

Before the sale to Walter, the Buss family, which owned and ran the Lakers for 46 years, was having trouble keeping up in a booming NBA. Player salaries are capped, but ownership’s resources matter much in terms of creating a competitive infrastructure of coaches, basketball operations, medical and scouting staffs.

So we were looking forward to seeing sweeping improvements when Walter took control and provided the organization with a much-needed financial infusion. After all, his Dodgers have won three World Series crowns and clinched the National League West in 12 of 13 seasons since 2012, when he and his partners bought the club for a then-MLB record $2.15 billion.

But as of Wednesday morning, we were still looking.

We thought the new Lakers’ regime would get to work without a second to spare. Yeah, they added a second row of seats courtside. And laid off more than a dozen employees.

We expected they’d beef up their scouting department. But they moved the G League team from the South Bay way out to the Coachella Valley, so even the most ardent fans in L.A. will have a hard time keeping an eye on the team’s prospects.

We expected, under Walter, that the Lakers would give their basketball brain trust an obvious boost.

But they’ve only flirted with filling the job of second assistant general manager. And they failed to poach anyone from the league’s most innovative front offices like the Dodgers did when they hired Andrew Friedman. Their big get was Rohan Ramadas, from the … New Orleans Pelicans, a team that made the playoffs only twice in the last eight seasons.

Iger and Kushner can do better. They better do better.

Joshua Kushner, founder and chief executive of Thrive Capital, speaks onstage during the Big Bets panel at the Fortune Global Forum 2024.

(Jemal Countess / Getty Images for Fortune Media)

I think they will.

This isn’t a fly-by-night proposition for Iger, who headed an effort by the Chargers and Raiders to build a stadium in Carson before Stan Kroenke built $5-billion SoFi Stadium in Inglewood.

In 2024, Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, who is dean of the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, acquired a controlling stake in the Angel City Football Club of the National Women’s Soccer League for $50 million, pushing its valuation to $250 million, a record for a women’s sports team.

Angel City hasn’t been winning, but they doubled the staff and wasted no time setting up a sizable new performance center at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks. The WNBA’s Sparks, which Walter has owned since 2014, are still waiting for their own practice facility, which is now finally under construction in El Segundo.

“As lifelong NBA fans,” Kushner and Iger said in a statement, “we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world.”

Iger knows as much as anyone about successfully stewarding an iconic brand.

Now he could be the Imagineer to bring the 17-time champion Lakers back to the happiest place on earth — the NBA’s mountaintop.

Chargers rookie wide receiver Brenen Thompson said he doesn’t love zipping around.

“To be fair, I really hate running,” Thompson, a former track star, said. “But I’m really good at it.”

Thompson has proven that so far in Chargers training camp, sprinting around defenders and maximizing his 5-foot-9, 170-pound frame in passing drills.

His speed and do-it-all attitude have made him one of Justin Herbert’s favorite targets, including on deeper routes, over the last two weeks.

“He’s going to be very good,” Herbert said of Thompson. “We saw it early on that he was going to be. He’s skilled. He’s fast. He’s going to make a lot of plays for us. So, I’m really excited about him.”

Added Thompson: “I know my speed is pretty much unmatched when I step on the field, and that’s something I take strong confidence in.”

Thompson was clearly the fastest player going into the 2026 NFL draft after he posted a time of 4.26 seconds in the 40-yard dash, the third-best time ever, at the scouting combine.

And after leading the Southeastern Conference with 1,054 receiving yards as a senior at Mississippi State, Thompson impressed the Chargers enough to be their fourth-round pick.

He’s thrived ever since — as a wideout and as a returner.

“I agree with Justin,” added coach Jim Harbaugh. “We’re all seeing the same thing. Much like Akheem [Mesidor], so far, so good — really good.”

Special teams coordinator Ryan Ficken has been impressed with Thompson’s work ethic, saying “he’s willing to go ahead and put in the work.”

The Chargers have good reason to be excited about Thompson’s budding role.

New offensive coordinator Mike McDaniel’s scheme is largely focused on getting the ball to playmakers in space quickly. With Herbert being tasked this season with getting rid of the ball quicker, receivers are being tasked with finding ways of getting open sooner.

“We’re doing a lot more motions, a lot more shifts, a lot more stuff like that. “[McDaniel’s] whole philosophy is speed and moving fast,” wideout Quentin Johnston said. “Just different formations … variations of the same route … I mean, shoot, that just shows how good a coach Coach Mike is — got us in different positions to be successful.”

Thompson acknowledged he struggled to adapt to the NFL’s “20-word” play calls early on after coming from no-huddle communication rules in college.

McDaniel, however, acknowledged the progress and dedication he has seen from the rookie over the last few months.

Chargers wide receiver Brenen Thompson runs a drill during rookie minicamp in May.

(William Liang / Associated Press)

“I think he’s captured the attention of the quarterback room by his attack and ownership of the offense,” McDaniel said. “Typically, it’s a very difficult transition … there’s not pictures on the sidelines that you memorize. … The most impressive part has been his professional attack and ownership of assignment, which is not easy.

“Now, the next challenge is that you have all these stacked installs — can you still execute everything while these new plays are being shoveled to you, much like in a season where you have a new game plan every week?”

It helps Thompson to have veteran receivers such as Johnston and Ladd McConkey, who are willing to work with him.

“I pick their brains a lot,” Johnson said. “Whether it’s a certain route or certain play, how do they see these things? … I think the world of those two guys, along with everyone else in the room.”

McConkey and Johnston have enjoyed working with him too.

“He’s flying around across the field,” McConkey said. “He didn’t run 4.2 by accident. … He’s going to be able to help us a lot this year, for sure.”

Added Johnston: “Man, that’s my dawg. He came in with one thing on his mind: speed. Shoot, you’ve seen his [40-yard dash] time … he brought that to the league — to this team — which I appreciate a lot. He’s a very smart dude in the classroom. … He’s been a fun guy to be around.”

The Chargers’ offense will undoubtedly be different under McDaniel — Herbert’s new shotgun stance is proof of that. Speed and spacing will be key. And those who find ways to learn and contribute quickly, like Thompson, will earn playing time.

“I came here to contribute [and] to make this team better, and so whether that’s blocking, running, special teams — whatever that is — I’m going to put my best foot forward,” Thompson said. “I’m nowhere near where I want to be right now.”