Lakers Employees “Anxious” Over Ownership Change Amid Jeanie Buss’ Legal Drama, Per Reports

Jeanie Buss is still listed as the Lakers’ operating governor. Her siblings voted to sell the rest of the family stake. She is in court trying to stop what she has called a breach of trust. While that fight plays out, the people who work in the building are reportedly living through the next ownership change.

Dan Woike of The Athletic reported that Bob Iger and Josh Kushner’s groups are in the “diligence” phase of a purchase at a $12.5 billion valuation.

“The pending changes … have certainly caused some anxiety for employees bracing for another ownership change,” Woike wrote. “The last transition, from the longstanding familial touches of the Buss family to a more bottom-line-driven Walter regime, included multiple rounds of layoffs.”

The same report is not only fear. “Multiple sources in different departments expressed optimism about the direction of the franchise under Iger and Kushner.” Some felt the Dodgers’ imprint on the Lakers pushed too hard toward analytics “and doing so with an arrogance that turned off some people in basketball operations and the locker room.”

Those people, Woike wrote, “weren’t upset to see a pathway for new management to come in even if it’s a bit of a mystery and doesn’t have the track record of the Dodgers’ success.”

Jeanie Buss abstained from the siblings’ 5-0 vote to cash out. She remains governor under the deal struck when Walter bought control, an arrangement Iger has said he intends to honor unless things change.

A majority of the six Buss beneficiaries can vote to sell assets, but the three co-trustees must actually execute the sale. Jeanie’s camp argues that the 2017 ruling blocks any action that would remove her as controlling owner.

Her siblings argue that the trust gives them the right to decide by majority and that they are acting consistently with prior rulings.

Jeanie Buss has run the franchise since her father Jerry died in 2013. She immediately pushed back against her sibling's wishes for a sale through attorney Adam Streisand, who called any such vote "void" and warned that proceeding would be a breach of trust and contempt of court.

Day to day, the franchise is still operating under Walter and the Buss Family Trust. High-end basketball jobs are not being filled the way a stable front office would fill them.

Jeanie Buss Remains Governor While Lakers Staff Wait on Iger, Kushner and Another Round of Change

“Anxious” was the word tied to the last transition. Walter’s group modernized the business and cut people. Employees who survived that are now being asked to survive diligence from buyers who have never run the Lakers.

Some in the building reportedly wanted Walter’s Dodgers-style process out of the locker room. Iger and Kushner are a mystery. A mystery, for those staffers, still beats the regime they had.

Lakers employees are anxious about another ownership change, per Dan Woike, while Jeanie Buss fights her family in court and remains the governor on paper.