EL SEGUNDO — Joey and Jesse Buss were terminated from their front-office positions with the Lakers on Thursday morning, a source confirmed with the Southern California News Group.
In addition to having ownership stakes in the franchise, Joey Buss was the organization’s vice president of research and development, while Jesse was an assistant general manager and director of scouting. Joey Buss had also been one of the team’s alternate governors for more than 16 years.
The reasoning for the departures of Joey and Jesse Buss wasn’t immediately known as of Thursday afternoon. The team didn’t make an official announcement of the firings.
“I found out [Thursday] morning that it was going to happen,” Coach JJ Redick said after the team’s practice. “But I don’t have any comment on personnel decisions as it relates to the organization.”
The brothers stated to ESPN’s Shams Charania, who first reported the news of their departures: “We are extremely honored to have been part of this organization for the last 20 seasons. Thank you to Laker Nation for embracing our family every step of the way. We wish things could be different with the way our time ended with the team. At times like this, we wish we could ask our dad [Dr. Jerry Buss] what he would think about it all.”
ESPN also reported that the Lakers parted ways with most of their scouting department on Thursday.
In his role, Joey Buss was “responsible for exploring new technologies and strategies for business and basketball development” and was also in charge of the organization’s South Bay G League affiliate. Jesse Buss oversaw “all scouting-related matters” for the Lakers, having an essential role in the draft process.
The departures are a part of a reorganization of the Lakers’ basketball operations department after the majority ownership of the storied franchise was officially sold from the Buss Family Trust to Dodgers controlling owner Mark Walter last month. The sale of the Lakers came at a valuation of approximately $10 billion, making it the largest sale ever of a North American professional sports team.
Before the sale to Walter, the Buss family had owned the Lakers since 1979, when the late Jerry Buss bought the franchise from Jack Kent Cooke for $67.5 million – a transaction that included the NHL’s Kings and the Forum in Inglewood. Buss sold the Kings to Bruce McNall in 1988.
After Jerry Buss died in 2013, Lakers’ ownership was passed to his children – Johnny, Jim, Jeanie, Janie, Joey and Jesse – via a family trust, with Jeanie serving as the franchise’s governor since. The family trust owned 66% of the franchise.
Since Jerry’s death, the family has occasionally clashed over control, with Jeanie removing her brother Jim from his position as executive vice president of basketball operations in 2017. Shortly after that, Jim and Johnny Buss attempted to rebuild the team’s board of directors without their sister, a takeover attempt that failed quickly.
With respect to the Family Trust, the Buss family needed the majority of Jerry Buss’ six children to vote to sell the majority stake of the team. While the sale got a majority vote, it wasn’t a unanimous decision among the six, with Joey and Jesse Buss voting against the sale, according to ESPN.
Joey and Jesse Buss’ older sister, Jeanie Buss, will remain the organization’s governor for at least the next five years.
Jesse Buss told ESPN on Thursday: “Dr. Buss’ idea was for Joey and I to run basketball operations one day. But Jeanie has effectively kept herself in place with her siblings fired.”
Joey and Jesse will maintain their minority ownership stakes in the Lakers. The brothers announced in September that they were launching Buss Sports Capital, a global sports investment, acquisitions and partnerships firm.
The departures of Joey and Jesse come amid the Lakers having an 11-4 record, sitting in fourth place in the Western Conference standings, for their best start to a season since 2020-21.