Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement - scroll for more content
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Brian Windhorst: The Lakers were bought with Middle East money. I know that Mark Walter is the governor. I guess Jeanie Buss is the governor, but he is the controlling owner. But that group, Mark Walter's group, took on 10 billion dollars from Abu Dhabi shortly before. I don't work for the company, so I can't verify… But they took on $10 billion from Abu Dhabi and then three months later bought the Lakers for 10 billion. They actually bought it for six billion, but 10 billion valuation. The influx of that Middle Eastern money and the Lakers just swifted all the valuations. So maybe they knew that they could sell the team for 10 billion, but maybe they didn't think they could do that till 2035, but all of a sudden the Lakers are now worth a lot of money.
NBA Courtside: Brian Windhorst on LeBron and Jeanie Buss: "For 20 plus years now, part of dealing with LeBron is dealing with headaches. Sometimes he is going to upset you but whatever he does to upset you he makes up for it x10. x20. x50. That was the case in Cleveland, Miami, and now in LA. Has Jeanie been upset with LeBron at times? Absolutely. Would she give anything back about the last 8 years? Absolutely not!"
When asked about the rumored beef between him and Buss, the Lakers star flat-out said that he does not pay much attention to such reports. “Quite frankly, I don't really to get involved in that, or the reports, or whatever the case may be, I've seen a lot of it, obviously. I don't really care about the reports, to be honest,” James said, via Khobi Price of California Post. “I don't care about an article. I don't care how somebody feel about me. If you know me personally and then you know what I'm about. These guys know what I'm about, and that's all the matter. I can care less how somebody feel about me.”
Draymond Green: Do you bow down and like kiss the ring and say thank you I’m appreciative? I’ve seen LeBron speak out how he’s appreciative of the organization for giving Bronny a chance. Also Bronny did do some work. Bronny worked to become who he’s become as well. It’s not like this kid wasn’t a top recruit and didn’t play at a top college. Give Bronny some credit as well. Does LeBron being with the Lakers help Bronny get drafted there? Of course.
The fallout from ESPN's report detailing an alleged rift between Los Angeles Lakers governor Jeanie Buss and LeBron James may not be over, and NBA insider Chris Haynes suggested the timing of the story could be significant. Speaking on Wednesday on SiriusXM NBA Radio, Haynes questioned why the report surfaced when it did. "I just question, 'Why now?'" he said. "And if it’s 'why now,' usually when things like this start to trickle out, something’s about to go down. I don’t know what that is, but that’s usually how this works."
Advertisement
On his “Game Over With Max Kellerman and Rich Paul” podcast, James’ agent downplayed the ESPN report that Buss, the 64-year-old Lakers longtime owner, has soured on James and his “outsized ego.” “There’s an article written every day,” Paul said. “Who gives a s—t? “I don’t.”
Baxter Holmes: This is when the Lakers acquired Anthony Davis in a trade. And on that day, I was told Jeanie Buss and Jesse Buss, her younger sibling, spoke over the phone. For whatever reason, I was told she brought up this alleged promise that had been made years earlier by Dr. Buss with her mother, Joanne — that he would never have kids with anybody else. And for whatever reason, she brought this up on this phone call, sources tell me, and said to Jesse: "You should have never been born." Word about this made the rounds in the organization. And as one source told me, that marked the beginning of the end.
Sam Amick: Lakers governor Jeanie Buss issued this statement to @TheAthletic in response to today’s ESPN story, which includes reporting about her relationship with LeBron James. “It’s really not right, given all the great things LeBron has done for the Lakers, that he has to be pulled into my family drama,” Jeanie Buss said. “To say that it wasn’t appreciated is just not true and completely unfair to him.”
In 2022, in the aftermath of the Westbrook trade, multiple people said Jeanie privately mused about not giving LeBron James a contract extension and, later that year, even about trading James, with the LA Clippers floated as a possibility. (This was before James received a no-trade clause in July 2024 after signing a new two-year, $104 million contract.) And when the Lakers drafted James' son Bronny with the 55th pick in the 2024 draft, Jeanie privately remarked that James should be grateful for such a gesture, but she felt that he wasn't, people close to the team told ESPN. That summer, as she discussed a new contract for James, Jeanie seemed more resigned to the fact that they'd have to do it -- almost begrudgingly accepting that they'd take a massive PR hit by not doing so.
In 2025, Jeanie Buss told her siblings of Walter's offer, a deal that would net each of them nearly half a billion after taxes. and people in Jeanie's inner circle, sources say, stood to make millions in bonuses. The deal closed in late October. Weeks later, Jeanie fired her siblings and remained the team's governor. Now, the Lakers move forward under new majority ownership, but the family remains fractured. As Janie Buss told ESPN, "I don't think my dad would be happy with the way things just went down. Not at all.”
Advertisement
The two brothers, along with some of their siblings, had learned during their June meetings and then in the days after that some members of Jeanie's inner circle stood to receive substantial bonuses from the sale. One person with knowledge of the events said that those people included Linda and Kurt Rambis, Grigsby, McCormack and Harris, the team's president of business operations. Linda Rambis stood to pocket $24 million, the same as McCormack, Grigsby and Harris. Kurt, meanwhile, stood to make $8 million. The figures were a nod, of all things, to Kobe Bryant, who wore the numbers 24 and 8 during his 20-year Lakers career. The total figure for such payouts was $114 million, the same figure that Janie said she was told during her June meeting with Grigsby, McCormack and Jeanie.
Janie said she thought that the relationship between Jeanie, Joey and Jesse was "really strong" but that there had been a lot of stress with the sale. She said that Jeanie has "always been a big sister to them" and that she never saw any strain. She said that since their dad passed in 2013, Jeanie has had to be the glue in the family: "She's had to keep us all together and happy." The two brothers also couldn't help but wonder whether their recent efforts to explore a smaller sale had forced Jeanie's hand -- in effect putting her in a position to fast-track a larger sale. Maybe it had, or maybe she had been planning to sell the team all along and the timelines just happened to coincide. Ultimately, it didn't matter. "At the end of the day," one person close to the family said, "Jeanie just didn't want any more Buss family members to own the team."
Privately, the two brothers wondered who was behind their firing. While McCormack had told each of them that "new ownership" had made the decision, they would also separately learn, through backchannels, that it was Jeanie who had directed it. Neither brother spoke to Jeanie the day the two were fired, people familiar with the events told ESPN, but Jesse released a separate statement to ESPN that hinted not only at the revelation that Jeanie was behind the firings but at a potential motive the two brothers had come to suspect more and more. "Dr. Buss' idea was for Joey and I to run basketball operations one day," Jesse told ESPN. "But Jeanie has effectively kept herself in place with her siblings fired."
Janie hasn’t heard from Jeanie since she was fired, but she doesn't blame her sister. Time has helped her move past her initial feeling that she had been tossed aside. "Jeanie doesn't have a mean bone in her body, and so she just has to make these tough decisions," Janie told ESPN. "And she's been having to make them ... I just wish she would've done it differently." Janie added, "Obviously it's turned into an ugly situation, and I can understand Joey and Jesse should not have been fired in that way because it's embarrassing, and I can understand that they're already upset. They thought that they were going to end up with the Lakers all by themselves and leave everybody out, but that's not what the plan was. That was never the plan. Actually, they shouldn't have even been in the plan, according to my mom and my dad originally. It was never meant for them to have the whole piece of pie. It was for all of us to share in."