Jeanie Buss just dragged five of her own siblings into Los Angeles Superior Court because they tried to cash out the last piece of the family Lakers stake and shove her out of the governor’s chair while they did it. That is the whole fight. Everything else is noise dressed up as process.
Jerry Buss bought this franchise, the Forum, and the Kings for $67.5 million in 1979. He built a culture, a brand, and a championship machine. When he died in 2013, he left six kids equal votes and a clear succession plan: Jeanie as controlling owner. The trusts were written to keep it that way. NBA rules demand at least 15 percent equity to hold that seat. The family still holds 17.8 percent through the one remaining trust. Do the math. Sell that stake into the Iger-Kushner deal and Jeanie drops below the line. Controlling owner status disappears. That is the play the petition says the other five ran.
I have watched this league long enough to know ownership drama when I see it. This one is personal, documented, and ugly.
The 2017 Order Was Not a Suggestion
Nine years ago Jim and Johnny tried to strip Jeanie of control after she fired Jim as president of basketball operations. She sued. A Los Angeles Superior Court order affirmed her as controlling owner and told the co-trustees to take every reasonable action to keep her there. Janie and Joey replaced Jim and Johnny as co-trustees. The structure stayed intact.
According to the 97-page petition filed this week, that order just got treated like scrap paper. Jeanie alleges the co-trustees “brazenly, knowingly and intentionally” violated the 2017 order and the trust itself by “secretly signing a purported resolution—void on its face—to sell” the remaining stake. The petition is blunt: “Jeanie never agreed to any sale, was never consulted and was never even informed.”
She thought the scheming ended in 2017. The filing says otherwise. “Jeanie thought she had put all of her siblings’ scheming and manipulations behind her in 2017. Sadly, that was not the case — and Jeanie must respectfully request relief from this Court a second time.” The Yogi Berra line they opened with lands hard: déjà vu all over again.
Mark Walter bought the majority stake last year at a $10 billion valuation. The Buss side kept 17.8 percent and Jeanie stayed governor under a multi-year arrangement. Then Walter agreed to flip his roughly 65 percent to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner at a record $12.5 billion. The tag-along provision gave the remaining Buss trust a path to sell at that same price. Five siblings, per ESPN and their own statements, decided the family was selling. Jeanie’s name was not on that decision. Her attorney Adam Streisand told them any such move without all three co-trustees is void and breaches the duty to maintain the 15 percent floor so she can remain controlling owner.
I read that sequence and I see a coordinated cash-out dressed up as family consensus. The petition calls it what it is: “devious behavior,” a “scheme,” animosity. “Their conduct is not driven by financial necessity but by animosity toward Jeanie and in willful disregard for the (Trust), this Court’s 2017 Order, their fiduciary duties, and Dr. Buss’s express intent.”
They already banked roughly half a billion dollars each after taxes from the 2025 majority sale. The remaining 17.8 percent at the new valuation is worth roughly $2.2 billion. That is life-changing money stacked on top of life-changing money. Jerry Buss’s intent was not “get liquid and erase Jeanie.” It was continuity. The trust language, as described in the filing, directed votes to keep her as controlling owner once he was gone. Two-thirds of the children could terminate a trust. They already did that with four of them. One remains. That one is the firewall.
Legacy Is Not a Liquidity Event
I do not care how many zeros sit on the term sheet. Selling the last family stake into a deal that drops the designated successor under 15 percent is an affront to what Jerry Buss built. The Lakers are not a private equity flip. Seventeen championships. One since his death. The governor’s seat is not a ceremonial title. It is the vote, the league contact, the public face of the franchise. Minority owners Patrick Soon-Shiong and Ed Roski Jr. are reportedly supporting Jeanie staying put and holding their own stakes. That tells you the room is not unanimous behind the siblings’ version of “family decision.”
The main Walter-to-Iger/Kushner transaction is not expected to collapse over this. Fine. The fight is narrower and more important: whether the last 17.8 percent can be forced out against the controlling owner’s will and against a live court order. Hearing is set for November 5. Jeanie wants the resolution declared void, Janie and Joey removed as co-trustees, damages, and contempt findings against the group that allegedly aided the move.
I am not a probate lawyer. I am a guy who has watched franchise ownership decide the fate of seasons, coaches, and legacies for decades. When a father writes the structure to protect one child’s control, and the other five allegedly run a secret vote to unwind it for another payday, the courtroom is the only honest venue left. Jerry Buss did not spend a lifetime turning $67.5 million into a global brand so his kids could treat the final slice like a garage sale.
Jeanie is fighting to stay above 15 percent and keep the seat her father assigned. The petition says the siblings blindsided her and told the world the family had decided when one of them had not. That is the case she is putting in front of a judge. I am with her. The Lakers’ next chapter should not start with the designated controlling owner getting voted out of her own trust by people who already got paid.
