Jim Alexander: How, exactly, to gauge the real impact of Wednesday’s stunning news that the Lakers (a) are being sold, after 46 seasons under Buss family ownership, and (b) are being sold to a neighbor, in a way of speaking, with Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter making a $10 billion deal to buy the team?
I’m still sorting it out, and I would assume people whose job is to study the business side of sports will be unpacking this for a long time. But it’s safe to assume this: There will be significant changes in what I’ve long considered a mom-and-pop front office. Jeanie Buss’ circle of advisors has historically been small, between family and Lakers alumni (hello, Kurt Rambis!) and others who have been there a long time, and little attention has been paid to analytics or other modern methods of scouting and evaluation.
That seemed to be changing a bit after JJ Redick’s arrival as coach, since he appears to recognize and value methods that the Lakers organization for years had ignored.
Now, with lots of money to spend, expect the new ownership to revamp the front office in much the way it did with the Dodgers. A couple of years into the Guggenheim Patners’ ownership, Ned Colletti’s emphasis on proven veteran leadership was replaced by Andrew Friedman’s more modern philosophies and the team leaped into the 21st century with both feet.
This isn’t going to mean the Lakers will spend more on players; the NBA’s updated salary cap restrictions, aprons and all, take care of that. But there’s no salary cap to govern front office expertise or ingenuity, and the improvements to come in those departments may be the most fascinating – and impactful – aspects of this deal.
Mirjam Swanson: Yeah, it’s the kind of news that has you feeling still in a state of shock the next day.
Even though!
Even though we maybe could have (should have?) seen it coming?
Podcaster Anthony Irwin – of the “Lakers Lounge” – has been tapped in over the past few seasons, and I remember the last time I got to be a guest, he’d asked me something along the lines of: What if the Lakers were sold to the Dodgers’ ownership group?
“Well, shoot,” I thought. “That’d be amazing.”
What’s more, I’d never seen reporting on this until the Times’ Dan Woike tweeted it last night, but, he noted that “The way the trust is structured, per my understanding, is that shares of ownership don’t transfer to the Buss siblings’ heirs after death … the ownership shares just go from being divided by six, to say, being divided by five and then four and so on and so on.”
So, surprisingly enough, to me, the Lakers weren’t going to stay in the Buss family forever … and if the team’s valuation is $10 billion, seems like a pretty swell time to sell that big piece of it!
Still, wow.
And I stand by my initial thought: This should be amazing, if Walter and Co. can do with the Lakers what they did with the Dodgers and build them up to a place where they’re bona fide contenders every single season, aprons be damned. Because fans’ always sky-high expectations will be higher yet.
Is that possible in today’s NBA, though? Where parity seems to have taken over? I hear people talking about the Oklahoma City Thunder as a juggernaut, because they’re young and primed for their first championship in OKC, but … juggernaut, no. Not yet. And less likely so if the Lakers, say, snag GM Sam Presti like the Dodgers did Andrew Friedman, eh?
Jim: Mirjam, this is where the impact of the new ownership will be felt most and soonest, not only changes in front office personnel but additions. And also, significantly, what happens with the pay scale for executives and, um, coaches. The Lakers have historically paid their head coaches below market value; there’s a reason why Phil Jackson was the last true difference-maker this franchise has had.
This quote from a story in The Athletic, attributed to “an NBA executive” who likely requested anonymity, provides a hint of where this is going:
“A key difference between baseball and basketball is that you can’t simply outspend everyone on payroll the way the Dodgers do. But what most people overlook is how much the Dodgers invest beyond just players. They spend at an elite level on infrastructure: front office talent, analytics and player development. Each area is essentially run by a GM-level executive, enabling them to retain top-tier personnel across the board.”
So I suspect we will be looking at not just successful executives but innovators, people who aren’t afraid to break new ground. Where Rob Pelinka fits here, I don’t know.
As for the coaches’ pay scale, if I’m JJ I wouldn’t go in and ask for a raise just yet, but he’s got three years left on his initial deal at $8 million per year. The top of the pay scale: The Golden State Warriors’ Steve Kerr at $17.5 million a year, with the recently retired Gregg Popovich next at $17 million annually in San Antonio, Miami’s Erik Spoelstra at $15 million and the Clippers’ Ty Lue at $14 million. Win a few playoff series, and ideally a championship or two, and bargaining power goes up exponentially.
A couple of other things: I had neglected in the Thursday column to note that Todd Boehly of the Dodgers’ ownership group is part of this deal as well. Boehly is also the controlling owner of Chelsea FC – who, the last we looked, was having its way with LAFC in the FIFA Club World Cup earlier this week – and Walter is part of the ownership of that franchise, too.
And, according to the reporting in The Athletic, what is currently being reported as a $10 billion deal could turn out to be as much as $12 billion, or nearly twice the price the Celtics sold for just a few months ago.
Mirjam: Those numbers are breaking my brain, not gonna lie.
(No wonder going to games is getting so expensive as to be all but out of reach for most of us peasants. The New York Times just had a piece: From 1999 to 2020, the average price of a seat across all sports rose about twice as fast as overall consumer prices, and then increased 19.5% between May 2023 and May 2025!)
It’s going to be fascinating to see what happens with an NBA team if new controlling owners pour the type of resources we expect into it, how much of a difference we’ll see with the product – which, to be fair, hasn’t been bad, Lakers fans.
As you mentioned, Jim, everyone is excited about them being better in the margins, right? And building up the infrastructure and such. But the Clippers have mostly kicked butt in that regard since Steve Ballmer – a man, at last check, who’s worth $136.5 billion took over … and the Lakers have one more championship to show for it, and a matching Western Conference finals appearance. The Lakers have hit on the big things, give them that.
There’s also been a lot written about how lacking the Lakers’ scouting departments were, in terms of professional and overseas evaluation, but to be fair, they have drafted well, from Ivica Zubac at No. 32 in 2016 to Josh Hart at No. 30 in 2017 to Max Christie at No. 35 in 2022, and the list goes on.
There’s certainly room for improvement, but it isn’t as though these folks – who were already here in a limited capacity, no? – are swooping in and taking over for Frank McCourt.
But, still, their track record suggests it will, in fact, be great … so long as Mark Walter and friends run the Lakers like the Dodgers and not like they do the Sparks, who are, on their watch, currently getting lapped in the WNBA’s fast-moving arms race.
Jim: Maybe the trick is holding on to those draft gems. And maybe a more robust front office structure would provide the kind of feedback that says, “Are you absolutely sure you want to trade Zubac?” That’s probably an easy second-guess now. But more information and healthy discussion lead to better decisions.
There was this note in one of the Times’ stories: Shortly after buying the Dodgers, Walter and Boehly expressed interest in buying AEG from Philip Anschutz, which would have included the Kings and the downtown arena then known as Staples Center. And I can just imagine Kings’ fans saying, “If only …”
But the point here is that among the advantages Walter and his ownership group had with the Dodgers was ownership of Dodger Stadium, which enabled them to undergo the series of renovations in recent years that have modernized the ballpark and enhanced both the fan experience and player comforts. (Although I suspect all of us wish they’d turn the speakers down occasionally.)
They will not have that sort of control over the arena, although AEG has embarked on its own renovations. The Lakers’ training facility in El Segundo opened in 2017, and I’m sure there will be renovations and improvements there as needed, which isn’t yet.
So, how can Walter afford all of this? Guggenheim Partners, the financial services firm that is now part of the TWG Global holding company, manages more than $320 billion in assets. His personal net worth is listed as $6.1 billion by Forbes, and as much as $12.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index.
(And the way his group has generated income from and for the Dodgers, from the $8.1 billion TV deal shortly after buying the team right up to the revenue generated from Japanese advertisers upon Shohei Ohtani’s arrival, lends credence to the idea that this group knows exactly what it’s doing.)
But it’s a sobering thought, for all of us who have ideas about how we’d run our favorite teams: Like anything else, it’s a lot easier when you have a lot of money.