Jeanie Buss Is Losing the Lakers to Her Own Siblings — Over $2.2 Billion

LOS ANGELES — The Buss family is fighting over the Lakers again, and this time the math is doing the talking. On Wednesday, Jeanie Buss's five siblings filed a 36-page formal response in Los Angeles Superior Court to her August attempt to block the sale of the family trust's remaining stake in the franchise — and they did not soften the language. They called her 97-page petition "legally and factually baseless," according to ESPN, and asked the court to let the transaction proceed on schedule.

The money is straightforward, which is exactly the problem for Jeanie. The Buss family trust holds 17.82% of the Lakers. Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse voted to exercise the trust's tag-along provision, joining the franchise's sale to the ownership group led by venture capitalist Joshua Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger at a $12.5 billion valuation. At that price, the trust's stake is worth approximately $2.2 billion — a little more than $370 million per sibling before taxes and transaction costs. Jeanie abstained from the vote. Five want the money. Jeanie wants the chair.

To understand how a family argument got this expensive, rewind about 14 months. Dodgers owner Mark Walter agreed to buy the Lakers for $10 billion, according to EssentiallySports — and then, in August, sold his majority stake to the Kushner-Iger group at a record $12.5 billion valuation, the richest franchise sale in sports history. Kushner and Iger said at the time they would honor Walter's arrangement keeping Jeanie as governor. The siblings' move tests exactly what that promise is worth once the trust's shares change hands.

Jeanie's August counterpunch was a 97-page petition filed through her attorney Adam Streisand, seeking to invalidate her siblings' vote. Her argument rests on a 2017 order that named her, Janie and Joey as co-trustees of the family trust and, in her reading, legally binds the family to keep her as the team's controlling owner for life. The petition called her siblings "devious" and accused them of plotting to remove her as team governor, according to NBC Sports. She also asked the court to remove Janie and Joey as co-trustees and to hold all five siblings in contempt.

Wednesday's 36-page answer takes that argument apart piece by piece. The siblings concede the 2017 stipulation required the co-trustees to take "reasonably available actions" to keep Jeanie in power — then argue it never restricted the beneficiaries' separate legal rights to terminate or liquidate the trust. Neither the stipulation nor the order, they contend, addresses the termination provision they are now exercising. As they see it, the trust agreement lets them divest with a two-thirds vote, and Jeanie has no legal power to stop them. The siblings' filing goes further, dismissing Jeanie's position as, in their words, "at most a meaningless academic exercise" — language the siblings wrote directly into their response.

The filing also takes aim at Jeanie's personal arrangement with Walter, struck when he took majority control in October 2025, which set her up to remain team governor and director for five years. The siblings contend she is placing her own desire to hold the NBA position above her fiduciary duty to the trust and its beneficiaries — effectively blocking a $2.2 billion payday the family already voted for in order to protect a job. That is their characterization in the filing, not a court finding, but it is the sharpest line in the whole dispute.

Then there is the governor math, which is the part Jeanie cannot argue around. NBA rules require a team governor to hold a minimum 15% ownership stake without partners. The trust's 17.82% is what lets Jeanie clear that bar under a family-ownership exception, according to RealGM — but if the trust sells, she can no longer remain in charge under the current arrangement. This is the real stakes of the case: not who gets the money, but whether the Buss family still runs the Lakers at all.

The backstory makes it uglier. The six siblings inherited their father's controlling interest through the family trust after Jerry Buss died in 2013. Every one of Jerry Buss's children once had a role with the franchise, but the 2017 order itself came out of an earlier power struggle — Jim and Johnny tried to remove Jeanie from the board that year. Settlement talks between the siblings broke down before Wednesday's filing, and the case now heads toward a hearing set for Dec. 8, after the NBA Board of Governors vote expected in November, according to RG.org.

What happens next is a collision of calendars. The NBA's owners vote on the Kushner-Iger purchase in November. The Los Angeles court takes up the siblings' response on Dec. 8. And hovering over all of it is the league's expected expansion vote — the one that could finally put a team in Las Vegas — which our NBA expansion tracker is following. The Buss era of the Lakers is ending one way or another; the only question left is whether Jeanie Buss gets a say in how.

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