The Buss family’s 47-year hold on the Los Angeles Lakers looked like it was finally ending. Then Jeanie Buss stepped in and said, “not so fast.”
Reports surfaced that five of the six children of late Lakers owner Jerry Buss voted to sell the family’s last 17.8% stake in the team. The buyers? Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. The catch? Jeanie Buss, the most powerful sibling in the group, refused to go along with it.
Now her lawyer says the sale can’t legally happen without her sign-off. What started as a straightforward payday has turned into another chapter in one of sports’ most dramatic family sagas.
The $2.2 Billion Question
Six siblings share ownership of the remaining Lakers stake: Jeanie, Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey, and Jesse Buss.
They inherited the team through a family trust after their father, Jerry Buss, passed away in 2013. Last year, the family sold most of its shares to Mark Walter at a $10 billion valuation, keeping a combined 17.8% for themselves.
Fast forward less than a year, and Walter agreed to sell his own stake to Kushner and Iger at an even higher price: $12.5 billion. That new number changed everything for the siblings still holding shares.
Here’s the simple math: 17.8% of a $12.5 billion franchise comes out to roughly $2.225 billion. Split six ways, that’s about $371 million per sibling before taxes and fees. It’s also on top of the roughly $500 million each sibling already pocketed less than a year ago.
Five siblings want to cash out. Jeanie doesn’t.
A Suspicious Emergency Meeting
The timing here is what makes this story so interesting.
Just days before Walter’s sale went public, the Lakers’ senior vice president of finance called an emergency meeting of the Buss siblings. The topic: dissolving the current family trust and replacing it with a new one that would lock up the family’s Lakers shares for another four years.
That meeting happened on a Tuesday. Walter’s deal with Kushner and Iger wasn’t mentioned during it. The very next day, news broke that Walter had agreed to sell at the $12.5 billion price.
That raises an obvious question: did Jeanie already know a bigger sale was coming? Did she suspect the new valuation would tempt her siblings to sell?
Nobody outside the family knows for sure. But once the Walter-Kushner-Iger deal became public, five siblings reportedly voted to sell their remaining shares. Jeanie voted no.
Jeanie’s Lawyer Says the Sale Is Illegal
Jeanie’s attorney, Adam Streisand, sent a letter to the other siblings’ lawyers disputing the reported vote entirely.
The letter argues any vote to sell the family’s 17.8% stake is legally void. Why? Because the family trust, backed by a 2017 Los Angeles Superior Court order, requires the trustees to keep Jeanie in place as the Lakers’ controlling owner.
That court order dates back to an earlier family fight, when Jim and Johnny Buss tried to push Jeanie out of control of the team. The order requires the trustees to use every reasonable means to keep Jeanie elected as controlling owner every year, for as long as she’s alive, unless a court says otherwise. According to her attorney, no court has ever changed that arrangement.
This is where things get complicated. The current trustees are Jeanie, Janie, and Joey Buss. Streisand argues the 17.8% stake can’t legally be sold without their approval, and that the trust must keep at least a 15% ownership stake so Jeanie can remain the controlling owner.
He also warns that trying to sell anyway could trigger a breach of trust, a breach of fiduciary duty, and even contempt of court. In short, this isn’t a simple case of majority rules.
Family Tensions Boil Over
The letter doesn’t stop at legal arguments. It also accuses two siblings, Joey and Jesse Buss, of leaking false and damaging information about Jeanie to the media for years, allegedly to hurt both her and the team.
That’s an accusation from Jeanie’s legal team, not a proven fact. But including it in a formal letter shows this dispute is about far more than money. It’s the latest sign of a family conflict that has been building for years.
Jerry Buss Built This Trust to Prevent Exactly This
There’s real irony in how this is playing out.
Jerry Buss spent years structuring his estate so his kids could share ownership of the Lakers for generations. He split ownership equally among them, used trusts to protect the arrangement, and built in safeguards so no single heir could force a sale just because they needed cash.
Those same safeguards have repeatedly become the source of family conflict instead.
In 2017, Jeanie fought off her brothers and kept control of the team. In 2025, the family agreed to sell majority ownership to Mark Walter. Now, just months later, five siblings reportedly want to sell what’s left for another $2.2 billion, and Jeanie is using the very trust her father created to try to stop them.
She appears ready to take the fight back to court if she has to.
For now, the Buss family’s decades-long run atop the Lakers isn’t over. It’s headed into overtime.
