A Secret Five-Year Governor Deal Is Revealed as the Buss Family's $2.2 Billion Lakers Fight Heats Up

LOS ANGELES

A legal filing has just revealed a secret five-year deal at the center of the Buss family's $2.2 billion fight over the Lakers: when Mark Walter took control of the franchise in 2025, he pledged to keep Jeanie Buss as team governor for five years — and, per Front Office Sports' Ben Horney, the agreement even gave her alternate-governor rights beyond that. The revelation lands as Walter's $12.5 billion sale to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger moves toward a league vote, and as Buss's five siblings filed formal opposition to her bid to block the sale of the family trust's stake. The family war over Los Angeles's marquee franchise isn't cooling off. It's getting papered.

The secret deal, on paper

Front Office Sports' Ben Horney, whose reporting on the filing was picked up this week by Hoops Wire and Hoops Rumors, laid out how the agreement worked: Walter pledged to take all actions "reasonably required or requested" — Horney's account of the filing's exact language — by Jeanie to keep her as a director and the controlling governor for five years, provided she or her affiliated entities maintained at least a 15% ownership stake in the team. That number is no accident: 15% is the NBA's threshold for serving as a team's governor.

But the agreement didn't stop at five years. Per the filing, after the five-year period, Buss secured the right to remain as the team's alternate governor beyond that window — so long as she or her affiliates still owned at least 5% of the team. Dan Woike of The Athletic separately reported the same structure. In plain terms: Jeanie negotiated herself a five-year guarantee as the boss, plus a backstop that would keep her in the room for as long as she held even a modest stake. It was a much clearer runway than anyone realized when Walter's $10 billion purchase closed last year.

Here's the problem: Walter has since agreed to sell his controlling stake to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger at a $12.5 billion valuation, and it's unclear whether Buss's side agreement carries over to the new ownership group. A personal pledge from the guy leaving the building is only worth as much as the new owners are willing to honor — and nobody has said they will.

Five siblings, one opposition filing

That's the backdrop for Wednesday's courtroom escalation. Five of the six Buss siblings — Jim (Jimmy), Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse — filed their formal opposition in Los Angeles Superior Court to Jeanie's August petition to block the sale, per ESPN's Shams Charania and Dave McMenamin. The siblings, who voted in August to include the family trust's 17.82% stake in the Lakers in the Kushner-Iger purchase, called Jeanie's petition "legally and factually baseless."

"Jimmy, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse Buss, the five of six siblings who voted to sell the Trust's shares in the Lakers, today filed their formal opposition, demonstrating that Jeanie Buss's petition is legally and factually baseless."— statement from the five Buss siblings, via ESPN's Shams Charania

Read that carefully, because the direction of the legal moves is easy to get backward: Jeanie filed to stop the sale. Her siblings filed to stop her. "While discussions among the siblings continue, their focus remains on facilitating the proposed transaction and the Trust's participation in it, while ensuring that all beneficiaries, including Jeanie, are treated equally," the siblings said in a statement reported by ESPN's Shams Charania. "Today's filing is a necessary step to protect those interests and ensure the transaction proceeds on schedule," the siblings' statement added.

What each side is actually arguing

Jeanie's case, per Charania and McMenamin's reporting on her 97-page petition, filed through attorney Adam Streisand about two weeks after the siblings' August vote: the proposed sale violates the terms of the family trust and a 2017 court order that required her co-trustees to take reasonably available actions to maintain her role as the Lakers' controlling owner. Her petition asks the court to declare the siblings' sale vote invalid, remove Joey and Janie as co-trustees, and hold them in contempt.

The siblings' 36-page rebuttal takes aim at the foundation of that argument: they contend the 2017 order never limited the beneficiaries' separate right to terminate the trust, and that neither the stipulation nor the order addresses the termination provision they are now exercising. They also point to Jeanie's own side agreement with Walter — the five-year governor deal — as evidence, per the reporting, that she has been acting in her own interest and against her duties to the trust.

Then there's the arithmetic, which is brutal for Jeanie. Under NBA rules she needs at least a 15% stake to remain governor, and the trust's 17.82% leaves almost no margin above that line — selling even one-sixth of the holding would leave about 14.85%, below the threshold. The five siblings aren't selling one-sixth. They're seeking to sell all of it, roughly $2.2 billion at the $12.5 billion valuation.

What happens next — and what it means for LA

The timeline is where this gets dicey for everyone. The court hearing on Jeanie's petition was originally set for Nov. 5 but was pushed to Dec. 8 to accommodate Streisand's prior commitments — which puts the hearing after the expected November NBA Board of Governors vote on the Kushner-Iger purchase. If the league blesses the sale first, Jeanie's court fight becomes an argument about a transaction that's already closed.

And for Los Angeles, the stakes go beyond the courtroom. The Lakers are the city's marquee franchise — the team the rest of the league's storylines orbit — and they open the regular season Oct. 21 while all of this plays out. New additions Walker Kessler and Collin Sexton have yet to make their Lakers debuts, and JJ Redick's group is still taking shape in the preseason. None of that stops for an ownership war, but a franchise fighting over who the boss is has a way of leaking into everything else: the product on the floor, the brand, the way the city feels about the team.

This is the second time in a year the Buss family's finances have moved this franchise. The family's more-than-40 years of majority ownership ended in 2025 with the sale to Walter at a then-record $10 billion valuation. The $12.5 billion number on the Kushner-Iger deal shows the asset keeps appreciating no matter who's fighting over it — which is exactly why the fight is this intense. There's $2.2 billion on the table for the siblings who want out, and a lifetime role for the one who wants in.

Background on this saga: our earlier story on the Buss family ownership war · Luka Dončić and life after LeBron · Lakers–Kings preseason rematch

Walter agreed to sell his controlling stake at a $12.5B valuation to Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger. Unclear whether the side agreement carries over. Five of six siblings (Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey, Jesse) voted to sell the trust's 17.82% stake (~$2.2B). Jeanie filed in August to block; the five filed formal opposition Oct. 7, calling her petition "legally and factually baseless" (per ESPN's Shams Charania and Dave McMenamin).

Nobody should be surprised the Buss family is ending 40-plus years of ownership with lawyers instead of handshakes — graceful was never on the table. The smart play for the new owners is obvious: honor the Walter agreement and keep Jeanie as governor. She negotiated that protection, the city knows her face, and stripping the last Buss out of the room turns a basketball team into a private-equity asset with good lighting. But family money fights don't run on smart — they run on spite. The $2.2 billion will sell. Whether the Lakers still feel like the Lakers afterward is the open question.

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