Brian Windhorst Reveals Lakers’ Ownership Chaos Cost Them Offseason Target

The Lakers were supposed to be finishing a front-office makeover this summer. But with the season now only two months away, the ownership fight is yet to get over. As per ESPN insider Brian Windhorst, that fight has now frozen a hire in midair.

“The Lakers were in the middle of this makeover for their team… I know of one guy who was a front office guy who was in the middle of leaving one team to go to the Lakers, and now all of a sudden they’re in a hiring freeze,” Windhorst said on The Hoop Collective podcast via Duke of Sports on X.

The Athletic’s Dan Woike already reported the same stall from league sources. There is a belief around the NBA that the Lakers cannot finish building out basketball operations until ownership is settled.

The Lakers started rebuilding their basketball operations under Mark Walter. They then hit pause when Walter sold the franchise to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner for a record-breaking $12.5 billion valuation, months after buying the team. But that pause extended after Jeanie Buss challenged her five siblings over the sale of the Buss family's remaining 17.8% stake.

That meant Jobs that were mid-recruitment had to be put on hold.

Rob Pelinka, whose job was up in the air, had planned two assistant general manager hires. One for scouting and player development, one for analytics, data, and the cap, plus more help in pro scouting. Including that, he had planned to hire a Business President as well.

Training camp is weeks away. Pelinka still has a contract. But Bob Iger has said it is “premature to speculate” about plans because the new group has not made them yet. Meantime, Jeanie Buss is fighting to keep 15 percent so she can remain controlling owner.

Although Patrick Soon-Shiong is staying as a minority partner, the basketball staff is left asking which of those people will actually sign the next offer sheet.

Someone in another front office had reportedly accepted, or was close to accepting, a Lakers job. But since the sale and the family dispute turned that into a freeze, the offseason has not been a productive one for the Lakers even when the player market is still open.

How the Freeze Became the Lakers’ Hidden Offseason Loss

After buying the team from the Busses last year, Walter’s camp started sharing ideas with Dodgers executives, hiring on the business side, and telling Pelinka to add modern specialized GMs.

Layoffs hit communications, marketing, and sales in the spring. The basketball side was supposed to get more people, not fewer. The Iger-Kushner deal and the Buss vote interrupted that.

The Lakers do not merely look messy. They lost, or at least delayed, a specific front-office target because the chain of command is not steady. Pelinka can still make basketball trades. He cannot staff the department that is supposed to evaluate the next incomings if ownership will not clear the paperwork.

The freeze will not last forever. The NBA board still has to approve Walter’s sale. Meantime, Jeanie Buss may or may not keep enough equity to remain governor.

Eventually it will be Iger and Kushnersay who will run the basketball day-to-day. But for that, the ownership saga needs to get over. Until then, the Lakers will stay as a franchise in a holding pattern.