The Lakers are still on track for a change in control, but the path to get there is anything but settled.
Josh Kushner and Bob Iger are expected to officially take control of the franchise after an NBA Board of Governors vote in November. Yet the ownership shift is now tangled in a fresh round of Buss family litigation, with Jeanie Buss trying to block the sale of the family’s remaining stake and her siblings asking a judge to dismiss her petition.
That filing, submitted Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court, pushes back directly on Jeanie Buss’ argument that her siblings cannot sell the family’s Lakers shares without her consent. It also challenges her effort to remove them as co-trustees.
The siblings’ response leans heavily on the trust language and on the family’s decision to move toward a sale. Friday’s filing contends that a 2017 court decision that instructed the trustees to take “whatever actions are reasonably available” to have Jeanie appointed as the controlling owner while the family trust holds Lakers stock became moot once a vote was held to terminate the trust to facilitate a sale.
Jeanie Buss filed her own lawsuit in August, and her 97-page petition seeks to block the sale of the family’s stake in the team. She is also pushing against the sale of the minority shares because, under NBA rules, selling them would force her out as Lakers governor if she no longer holds the required 15% stake.
The family’s latest filing says the opposite: that the trust text “unambiguously answers each question” and that the trust previously barred any sale of Lakers stock during Dr. Jerry Buss’ lifetime without his consent, but contains no comparable restriction tied to Jeanie. The siblings argue they have the right to terminate the family trust and sell their remaining 17.82% stake to Kushner and Iger’s ownership group.
That stake is estimated to be worth about $2.2 billion.
The dispute is playing out against the backdrop of one of the league’s most valuable franchises. The Lakers were purchased for $67.5 million in 1979, and the family’s remaining share is now part of a sale process that has already drawn a valuation of $12.5 billion for the broader transaction involving Mark Walter’s recent sale of his shares to Kushner and Iger.
The timing adds another layer. The NBA Board of Governors did not vote on the Lakers sale at its September meeting, and the next expected step is the November vote. The Lakers open the regular season on Oct. 21 against the Golden State Warriors, with the ownership fight still unresolved in court.
Jeanie Buss was seen at the Lakers’ home preseason opener on Oct. 8, a reminder that the legal dispute is unfolding while the team’s day-to-day business continues. The family’s filing also argues that selling to Kushner and Iger would maximize the value of the trust’s 185.59 shares for all beneficiaries, including Jeanie.
For now, the central question is not whether the Lakers are headed toward new control, but whether that handoff will arrive as a clean transfer or as the next chapter in a family fight that is still very much alive.