Jeanie Buss contests vote to sell Lakers stake, calls family strategy ‘breach of trust’

{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”VideoObject”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/88cbUtgKURO09HI/”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/video/88cbUtgKURO09HI/”,”name”:”Everything we know about the Lakers being sold again”,”description”:”Dan Woike gives us exclusive insight into how and why the Lakers were sold for the second time in two years, including why Mark Walter’s group agreed to sell the team to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. “,”uploadDate”:”2026-08-12T19:43:12.466Z”,”duration”:”PT1M48S”,”thumbnailUrl”:”https://cdn-media.theathletic.com/video-stream/auto-thumbnail/88cbUtgKURO09HI/e7DyCqxhbG1x.0000000.jpg”,”contentUrl”:”https://video.nyt.com/athletic/streams/88cbUtgKURO09HI/e7DyCqxhbG1x/e7DyCqxhbG1x.m3u8″,”transcript”:”The Lakers have been sold. No, this is not a video from last summer. This is a video from today, this summer, 2026, for the second time in 15 months, 14 months now, the team has changed hands. They moved from the Buss family to Mark Walter and now thanks to a $12.5 billion agreement. They will be moving from Mark Walter and the Guggenheim Group to Bob Iger and to Josh Kushner. This is very surprising news. People around the Lakers, people around the NBA did not see this coming. This deal apparently came together very quickly over the course of the weekend. Obviously there are investigations going on into Mark Walter’s finances. I am told at least, you know, at least from people close to the Walter Group that this had nothing to do with it, that this was an opportunity just to make some extra money, that it was a smart investment. Obviously a $2.5 billion increase in evaluation in 12 months is pretty remarkable. But obviously a lot of questions still to be asked, a lot of questions still to be answered. I think right now the major takeaway is that the Lakers are in flux, again, that this is an organization that had the stability of family ownership, which is not a word we would associate with the family ownership. It had certainly its share of drama with the Buss family, but at least we’re under the same roof. For more than 40 years and now in 18 months have changed hands twice. Obviously, the deal still needs to be approved by the NBA’s Board of Governors. A lot has to happen in terms of due diligence and finance because of the rapid nature that things are happening, but we’re going to tackle it all at the athletic, what it means for basketball, what it means for business, what it means for news and everything that’s going on with the investigations and different things like that. It’s never quiet around the Lakers and it wasn’t quiet this morning.”,”ineligibleRegion”:[“BI”,”BY”,”CD”,”CF”,”CU”,”IQ”,”IR”,”KP”,”LB”,”LY”,”ML”,”NI”,”RU”,”SD”,”SO”,”SS”,”SY”,”UA”,”VE”,”YE”,”ZW”],”publisher”:{“@type”:”NewsMediaOrganization”,”@id”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/#publisher”,”name”:”The Athletic”,”url”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/”,”foundingDate”:”2016-01-25″,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”@id”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”url”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”contentUrl”:”https://theathletic.com/app/themes/athletic/assets/img/the-athletic-wordmark-black.png”,”creditText”:”The Athletic”,”height”:”60″,”width”:”435″},”publishingPrinciples”:”https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/edit-guidelines/”,”sameAs”:”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Athletic”},”author”:[{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”Dan Woike”}]}