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Dr. Jerry Buss paid $67.5 million for the Lakers in 1979 and ran the franchise until his death in 2013, when control passed to his six children through a family trust that named his eldest daughter, Jeanie, as the team's governor. That arrangement held for more than a decade, and it survived one attempted overthrow in 2017. It is now being tested a second time — this time over money, not boardroom seats. In June 2025, the Buss family agreed in principle to hand majority control to billionaire Mark Walter, and the NBA formally signed off on that $10 billion deal on October 30, 2025, with the family retaining a minority stake and Jeanie staying on as governor. Walter's ownership run barely lasted a season. By last month, Bloomberg had reported that federal prosecutors and the SEC were examining possible insurance fraud tied to Guggenheim Partners and TWG Global, the businesses Walter runs, and the Wall Street Journal had separately reported that a 2024 stroke had raised internal questions about his ability to keep leading them. Iger and Kushner move fast Against that backdrop, former Disney chief Bob Iger and venture investor Josh Kushner — who had been chasing an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas — pivoted toward Walter instead, approaching him with an offer on a Sunday, and the two sides had a deal within three days. On August 12, the pair confirmed they were buying Walter's majority stake at a $12.5 billion valuation, a roughly $2.5 billion gain for Walter in under a year of ownership. Walter called the stretch as owner "one of the great honors of my life" in a statement announcing his exit, while Kushner and Iger said "we are deeply honored for the opportunity" to take over. Kushner, the younger brother of White House adviser Jared Kushner, already held minority pieces of the Memphis Grizzlies and Miami Heat that he'll now have to divest, and he had recently been part of a group pursuing a stake in the World Cup before soccer's governing bodies pushed back on that proposal. Iger, meanwhile, already co-owns the National Women's Soccer League's Angel City FC with his wife, Willow Bay. The takeover lands as the Lakers rebuild around Luka Dončić following LeBron James's free-agent departure for Philadelphia. The clause that reignited the family fight Buried in Walter's original purchase agreement was a tag-along right: a provision letting the Buss family sell its leftover shares at whatever price a future buyer paid Walter. On Monday, August 17, ESPN's Shams Charania reported that the Buss family trust had voted to exercise that right and sell its remaining 17.8% of the team to the Iger-Kushner group at the same $12.5 billion valuation. Five of the six siblings — Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse — reportedly backed the sale; Jeanie was the only one who didn't vote, and multiple sources told ESPN she never responded to the request at all. A statement attributed to the family framed the decision as bittersweet, saying: "we love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles." If that sale closes, Iger and Kushner would control the entire franchise outright — Deadline pegs their stake from the Walter purchase alone at roughly 83% even before the Buss shares are added — and Jeanie would drop below the 15% ownership floor the NBA requires of a controlling owner, ending her run as governor. Jeanie Buss says there was no vote to honor Jeanie didn't stay quiet for long. Later that same Monday, her attorney, Adam Streisand, sent a letter to law firms representing her five siblings arguing that any vote to sell is legally meaningless. The letter, obtained by CNBC, leans on an April 2017 Los Angeles Superior Court order that came out of an earlier sibling power struggle — more on that below — which instructs the trust's co-trustees (Jeanie, Janie and Joey) to vote their shares so that Jeanie remains controlling owner for as long as she lives, and to keep the family's holding at or above the 15% threshold that status requires. Streisand also went after two of the siblings directly, telling CNN that Joey and Jesse Buss had been feeding ESPN "false, defamatory and pernicious" information, and warned that if the others pressed ahead, "I will go to court to seek to hold them in contempt." This isn't new territory for the Busses. In February 2017, brothers Jim and Johnny Buss tried to reshape the Lakers' board in a way that would have pushed Jeanie out as controlling owner, after she had already fired Jim as head of basketball operations and replaced longtime general manager Mitch Kupchak with Magic Johnson. Jeanie, represented by the same lawyer she's using now, obtained a temporary restraining order, the brothers backed down and canceled the shareholders' meeting they'd called, and the fight ultimately produced the court order Streisand is now citing to block this latest sale attempt. © {{Year}} Latin Times. All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.