The Buss family’s Los Angeles Lakers battle is no longer a quiet personal disagreement. Jeanie Buss now clearly stands against her five siblings, who voted in favor of selling 17.8% of the remaining shares. But Jeanie appears to be determined to keep her position and control. Before we get into the why, holding onto power could come at a steep cost. And LA might not be ready for it.
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“The bottom line is, Jeanie Buss doing this is not good for the future of the Lakers,” Jason Timpf stated on Hoop Tonight. “You have 17 championships worth of pressure there. You want your CEO, your leader, the person running the show, to be the best person for the job.
Right now, what Jeanie Buss is is a representation of a family that is tearing itself apart. Just simply based on that circumstance, she’s the wrong person to be in the chair. So I would argue, regardless of what happens, whether they keep the 17% or not, Jeanie Buss cannot be governor of the Lakers anymore.”
According to Timpf, Buss is tied to an older era of Lakers basketball that no longer serves the franchise. Even if she is legally or morally right, that may not matter. The priority should be the team’s future… But is it? Really?
The drama isn’t just about Bob Iger and Josh Kushner emerging as new owners, or the Buss family voting to sell their shares. Jeanie Buss is now locked in a fierce legal fight with her family over control of the franchise. Even though the outcome remains uncertain, a report from The Athletic claims this matter is far from done.
Sam Amick and Dan Woike reported, “Could there be a way for the rest of the siblings to sell and Jeanie to remain as governor? That would require her finding a way to still own at least 15 percent of the shares, but it is possible. Per a league source, Jeanie would be open to exploring that scenario.”
Now, here’s the thing: Jeanie Buss had a five-year guarantee tied to Mark Walter’s purchase of the Lakers’ controlling stake. That arrangement was expected to continue under Iger and Kushner, though Iger suggested, “If things change, they’ll change.”
However, NBA rules added another hurdle because a governor needs at least 15% ownership. In this case, the Buss siblings collectively hold 17.8%, and Jeanie will need to shell out a guaranteed $2 billion or more from her own pocket to make this work. Whether Iger and Kushner would support that remains uncertain.
Meanwhile, the court order that Jeanie’s attorney, Adam Streisand, sent to the Buss siblings clearly stated that no sale could happen “without approval by the co-trustees, i.e. Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss.” In simple terms, if Jeanie doesn’t approve the sale, it doesn’t go ahead, regardless of the minimum four-vote threshold that they crossed with five votes.
The 2017 court document stated that the Buss family trust is instructed to take all “actions reasonably available to them, including voting the Trust’s shares” to ensure that Jeanie was elected as the Director of the Board of the Lakers on an annual basis during her lifetime.
“The Order remains in full force and effect,” Jeanie’s attorney wrote. “There has never been a modification of the Trust. No effort has ever been made to justify to the Court that there are circumstances for modifying the Trust, and there are no circumstances that could be proven to justify any modification.”
On the basis of this, Jeanie’s lawyer ended the letter by demanding that “no action” shall be taken on this “supposed ‘vote.'”
However, the Buss siblings have already released their statement saying they’ve collectively decided to sell the Buss Family Trust shares and “it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”
Jerry Buss, who originally owned the franchise, had trained Jeanie for years to eventually become the Lakers’ governor and run the team herself. Years after his 2013 death, Jeanie publicly pledged her commitment to the franchise and never spoke about selling it to another third party. But tension surfaced as the Lakers had a phase of no playoff basketball for years before the LeBron era.
Amid the turmoil, Jeanie fired Jim as the franchise’s head of basketball operations and, years later, also went on to relieve her other siblings of their front-office duties after former owner Mark Walter joined the team last year.
Janie, who was nearing retirement, pleaded not to be fired and wanted to resign even though she would be paid through the end of the calendar year. She told ESPN she felt “like a crumpled-up piece of paper thrown into the trash.”
“I don’t think my dad would be happy with the way things just went down,” Janie said. “Not at all.”
Even though the Walter deal allowed Jeanie to contractually be in charge while filtering out all her other siblings with a half-a-billion-dollar paycheck each, the LA Dodgers owner’s offcourt trouble reportedly played a huge role in forcing him to sell the Lakers within a year.
It made way for the Iger-Kushner duo to take control at a $12.5 billion valuation, but the personal conflict and animosities lying within the Buss family are more in the spotlight than the actual takeover itself.
Although Jeanie reportedly appears hell-bent on not letting go, it doesn’t look like things will resolve any time soon.