Locked On Lakers - Daily Podcast On The Los Angeles Lakers - How Will LAKERS SALE to Kushner & Iger IMPACT Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka?

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

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As the news settles in of Mark Walter's shocking, sailed the Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. We wonder what comes next for the Lakers. You are Locked-on Lakers. Your daily Los Angeles Lakers podcast, part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. Thanks for stopping by Locked on Lakers, Brian Komeneski. Andy Kaminowski, a surprisingly substantive newsday for a random,

August Wednesday in Los Angeles, we all wake up to the news that the Lakers are being sold again, after being held in family control for decades. They've now been sold twice in a little over 14 months. I want to let everybody know that today's episode is brought to you by Fandual. Join all the action at fendual.com to play daily dingers and make your free pick on who's hitting a homer this MLB season. So Mark Walter, who bought the team just about 14 months ago for about $10 billion, sold it on Wednesday to an investment group that includes Josh Kushner, the venture capitalist, and former Disney head Bob Eiger for reasons we'll get into here in a second, Andy.

That group is expected, at least in some circles, perhaps to grow. But those are your headliners. Man Alive wasn't expecting this. I wasn't expecting this when I woke up at, you know, seven or so in the morning. It would appear nobody was expecting this. Even Ramona Shelburne over at ESPN and shout out to her for getting one of the biggest sports stories,

maybe the biggest since the last time the Lakers were sold. She was not even aware of this as a possibility, really until maybe six hours, seven hours before she broke it. So, I mean, this really is a seismic event that nobody really saw coming at all. It's obviously generated a ton of reaction and a ton of questions, everything ranging from what will this do in terms of the way the Lakers are going to be run? How does Luca Dodgich feel about this? What does this do for what does this do to Rob Polinkin in terms of job security?

Jeannie Busses contractually worked out language that would allow her to remain governor moving forward. The Dodgers are they all of a sudden going to end up getting looked at? How much does this have to do with Mark Walters businesses being under federal investigation? Like there is a lot going on with this. We clearly do not know all the answers, but at least more details have started to come out, including some comments from Bob Eiger to our friend Kobe Price over at the California Post that we'll share. Yeah, it's interesting. The why part of it is both, it's interesting, just because it's like simultaneously fascinating,

but also in some ways the least important part of this, at least to me, like the, because it's going to happen. And so, you know, why is Mark Walter choosing it? Is it, you know, any, some combination of, you know, just, you know, the sheer return on a very quick investment of over $2 billion. You know, bought the thing 14 months ago, selling it now for, you know, $2.5 billion more. Maybe that just that's, you know, too much money to pass up. I've seen some reporting, people passing along stuff from Bloomberg, wondering whether or not this is related to helping pay down the debt that is part of this investigation, this, you know, bookkeeping question of, you know, related to Mark Walter's insurance holdings. There is at least some speculation that this money will be used in part to help pay down that debt and maybe avoid certain other fines,

whatever it might be. I don't know. It could be that he just didn't love the basketball world. Any number of things are possible. I actually agree with you. I think the most relevant sports question for Los Angeles fans around this after it's already done is, I wonder what that means for the Dodgers. And so for the Lakers, though, it raises all kinds of questions about what comes next, because this is a very, very, very. different setup for you know, Mark Walter was a minority owner of the team already. He is somebody that Los Angeles fans knew well.

He had a template in place with the Dodgers, very well established that they had moved aggressively to start integrating with the Lakers. There is no, you know, Josh Kushner and Bob Iger have both been involved in sports, but there is no track record like what Walter had with the Dodgers for fans to go like, oh, they're going to do that. Right. And there's no connection to the city other than Angel City, the women's soccer

team that Bob Iger and- No connection to the city from a sports ownership standpoint. Right. Like there, yes, there's no direct connection to the city in terms of anything that, I guess, Laker fans would either wrap their arms around or pin their hopes on, Stan. cast and for it's worth a co-owner of the Dodgers and also president was quoted before Wednesday's game saying this is a Lakers story not really a Dodger story it really has nothing to do with the Dodgers they're completely separate and so there are no changes here or contemplated here and I think that pretty much is the whole story we will see if that remains the whole story but for the time being that's the story that they're putting out and I imagine they're sticking to it

until there is reason that they can't. As far as for those unaware, Josh Kushner has been a minority owner for the Memphis Grizzlies and currently the Miami Heat, he will obviously have to divest those shares. Bob Iger. We call that red paper clipping. He turned his shares of the Grizzlies into shares of the heat,

turns his shares of the heat into shares of the Lakers. Well, I don't think as far as the direct shares, of the Lakers that has Jack bleep to do with the red clipping from the Miami Heat that has much more to do with his other revenue streams and the type of money. Sure, I'm just saying he's he's upgraded his ownership stakes in terms of franchise quality quite nicely. Yeah, and Bob Iger, for what it is worth, has been known for a long time as a massive basketball fan.

He has run Disney. Like they both have experience insofar as being out. at the top of either very big businesses, very complicated businesses, and they have some track record of success, although certainly in the case of Josh Kushner, a track record of controversy and investigations himself. And there's going to be a lot of scrutiny and skepticism just given his last name. And we've already seen it. Yeah. And a lot of people, you know, the most, I mean, he's a venture capitalist who has a variety of,

different funds and stuff. The one he's working on is actually and currently most sort of raising investments for is really centered around a kind of AI proof investments as much as possible and certainly, you know, basketball franchises qualify in that regard. And so, but it's it is interesting like, you know, when you when you think about, you know, who these guys are and where they get their money and all that kind of stuff, like it's not totally totally clear even who else is going to be part of the ownership group or where it's going to come from because you can only have 20% of a team owned by, you know, essentially an investment fund.

You need the other 80% needs to be humans. Yeah, Axios has reported that Thrive Eternal, the investment fund that we were just referencing of Josh Kushner is expected to invest, but like you said, can't be more than a 20% stake. Kushner is, it's being reported that there's expectation that he would be the controlling owner and that Iger and Kushner would invest individually from Joe Pompliano, who has a substack huddle up, covers sports and business. Cushner has an investment fund that has raised billions of dollars to buy assets exactly like the Lakers, but NBA rules explicitly ban investment funds from owning more than 20% of a single team.

Iger is also not a billionaire with Forbes pegging his network closer to 700 million. So that likely means could. Well, I mean, but this stuff matters. No, right. It means right. It means that they're going to need more. Right. Individual investors.

Per Pompliano likely means one, Kushner is putting up a large chunk of the money, which is why, again, reports that he will serve as the team's governor. That is interesting language in and of itself, the when. And also, Kushner and Iger are planning on raising concerns. significant outside capital, bringing on a dozen or so limited partners. So I guess sort of the foundation and maybe the barest of nuts and bolts are what we know so far, but there is a lot of information that is, there's a lot of information, a lot of names and companies that are eventually going to become known and they're going to be, again, scrutinized. And I think given the

way the Lakers have gone from one family business that fans knew for decades. I mean, going back to 1979, the 7980 season, Magic's rookie year. That was Dr. Bus's first year ownership. Decades of bus family to selling to Mark Walter and Guggenheim Company, but familiar face with Mark Walter to this, where they're not familiar with either. of the primary names other than Bob Eiger with Disney and Marvel and stuff like that, but certainly not in this space. And then the other names coming in, it's going to make a lot of Laker fans trepidacious,

and I do not blame them at all. So let's look next at some of the big questions that come with it, starting with the future of Jeannie Bus, starting with the reaction of Luca Donchich and what comes next. The Lakers, again, have been making moves to reshape, at the very least, the business operations that they have, and a lot of it, despite what Stancast and said, you know, you relate earlier in the segment, are, you know, there was a lot of mixing and commingling going on. What happens to that now and where do the Lakers go? So all those questions

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Wednesday that, you know, this is, as you noted something that came together incredibly quickly. Kobe Price, I believe this was in Kobe's report for the California Post talking to Bob Eager that he, you know, this group, this investment group had been interested in, and they'd been big players in the Vegas expansion team, which looks like it could cost anywhere from, you know, 8 million, 10 million upwards to secure that franchise. Iger said that he had, it was given information that it was possible Mark Walter might be interested in selling. So you see news like that and you wonder, okay, maybe this does have something to do with

the investigation and some of the money that he might need to, you know, make that go away as quickly as possible, settle things, whatever it might be. The flip side is, Andy, the Lakers were not behaving like a team. Mark Walter was not behaving like an owner that expected perhaps to need to do this. So, you know, for an investigation that wasn't brand new. And so it could be a little bit of both where like, I wasn't really thinking about doing this, but if you're going to give me $2.5 billion on top of this stuff to, you know, kind of goose it, I've really gotten used to owning the Lakers and I can let it go. But the question becomes, you know, the Lakers had, were sort of like, I don't know, maybe a third of the way, I guess, halfway through kind of a big

home renovation. Depends which side of the building you're talking about. Not very far along on the basketball side, much further along on the, on the, on the, on the business side. And, you know, they had brought in different personnel and they were changing the way, you know, some of the stuff operates. They were monetizing new things. And at the very least, they're out trying to hire. They're doing interviews for to build out the front office on the basketball side.

And they've been doing it in a very specific way that was related to this Dodgers model. Obviously, they are no longer going to be part of that Dodgers umbrella in the sense that. that the guy who owns that you they're not going to integrate in the same way that they would have with the same guy owning both teams. And so, you know, the operating model is going to change. Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. You mentioned both the operating model and the operating umbrella. And to me, thus far, it's felt much more like operating umbrella than model just because what they've actually been doing to me doesn't necessarily feel that. groundbreaking or specific or different.

It's just involved very specific people from the Dodgers. Like it doesn't feel like they've been either creating new positions or adding specific on the basketball side, anything that is especially new. If anything on the basketball side, the biggest question has been, why haven't they been hiring people at all? Seemingly like that that has been moving. Go faster is what people. Yeah, that has been moving much slower than either one of us,

suspected or expected. And I guess if you're looking for a glass half full version of this, it could mean that however this transition moves forward, knowing that eventually it's going to be Kushner and Iger at the top, you can at least try to fill those positions with guys who come Kushner and Iger approved just so hopefully you end up with less turnover moving forward. Right. I mean, that's true. Side note, I do feel bad, by the way, for those people within the organization who lost their jobs and there were many of them specifically because of this new ownership group and the decisions they wanted to make and the direction they wanted to go and within 14 months that has completely changed it sucks for them it's often a

reminder that whenever organizations make decisions like this there is typically fallout and i mean and i feel for those people it'll be interesting to see how many of the people that they hired to replace those people. Keep their jobs or lose their jobs too. Although a lot of those people at least still have a job seemingly with the Dodgers. Like there's a lot of them. Maybe. Maybe. I don't keep up with the Dodgers enough to know if they backfilled some of those positions, you know, to where the redundancies might be.

I mean, people are going to lose their jobs here and, you know, other jobs will be created. And that's, that is, as you say, part of how this works. I mean, but it's a good point. Like, if it's going to happen, I guess it's better to have it happen now because, there is less for the new ownership group to unwind. But the other, but what I, what I'm very curious to see, like what happens in the meantime? Like they've got, again, the plastic is up around the house and the,

you know, the contractors are out. Like, do they, do they stop working? Does construction continue? What happens in the interim? Because, you know, it's going to take three or four months before this sale is even approved. And so, you know, the progress, slow as it might have been, there was a discernible direction and expectation of what was going to happen. Now, like, construction, I guess, theoretically could stop. And that puts the Lakers in a holding pattern until new ownership takes over.

I guess. I mean, I feel like if they, if they, A, want to be proactive about this and B, if they want to be reassuring to a fan base, that very understandably is going, what the F man? Like, I mean, this is, to see an organization like the Lakers essentially get flipped. I mean, there's no better way to put it. Like, this really feels like I saw someone on Twitter comparing it to like you purchase a duplex and like a year later, you're turning a thing around. I mean, it has felt, especially for an organization like the Lakers, very impersonal,

this whole process. And I think if you want to go a long way towards reassuring fans, it would involve feeling like you're looking to make progress, looking to be. Sure, but I don't think you, I understand that. I don't think you can't. I mean, Mark Walter owned part of the team. And I don't believe that the Lakers made any significant hires or did anything significant in between the time that the announcement was made and hired it. So I just don't agree. I can think of one off the top of my head. Who? I refuse to believe that Jeannie Bus would have been able to stomach not giving LeBron another

one plus one. That's Mark Walter. But these are decisions. I guarantee she's running that past Mark Walter. Okay. Again, LeBron to be your own part of the team at the time. No, he's not official at that point.

But he's still, Andy. He had a stake in the team. He was part of the ownership group of the team. But it was a different role, though. I mean, he wasn't at the top at that point. But I understand. But even if they, you know, there are certain basketball to say they're not, it's not that they're not going to make basketball choices between now and when the, you know, when the new,

when the, when the deal is approved, however many months that takes, and the new ownership comes in. Obviously, there will be transactions. The Lakers will continue to operate as a team. My question is, how much. of this big stuff, this infusion of cash, you know, new hires, all these are the things. What continues and what stops? Because this isn't even, you know, Jeannie, you know, walking down the hall to talk to the guy who already owns 25% of the team. This is an entirely new group of people

coming in. And I don't even know what the rules are about, you know, those, you know, I'm sure they'll try to, you know, this is all, you know, it's all happened, obviously. so fast. But I just, there's, I think, a certain amount of holding pattern type stuff that's going to happen here. And then when they come in, because, you know, you used to make the point a lot, like, it's very helpful that Mark Walter had been part of the Lakers organization for a long time at the point where he bought the team. There is not that internal understanding and institutional knowledge that comes from Kushner and Bob Eiger. So there's going to be a lot more learning about who's there, who's not making their own decisions, doing those types of valuation.

His level of familiarity isn't there. So I just, I think there's a good chance a lot of these initiatives either slow down or certainly change significantly under new ownership. It depends what the initiative it is. And obviously the decisions might be different if Mark Walter was at the top versus Eiger and Kushner. My point is simply an assistant GM role, for example, is important. They need to be buffing out this front office in general. They cannot, if they have actual candidates that they could use to put in that seat, they can't hold off on that for four to six months, given that, you know,

you start creeping into most of the season. You can't hold off on that simply because that is the type of thing that you should be running past Eiger and Kushner. prepared to make this offer now, they should be prepared to be a part of those type of decisions. Again, I don't know. Otherwise, the organization is just. I don't know, right. I don't know how that works. I mean, there are things, you know, rules and things that happen around these sorts of decisions, at the very least it's going to take a little time to get it going. But you know, you mentioned Jeannie and Rob.

What happens to them? Because Bob Eiger had a very interesting quote to Kobe Price in the California Post about the potential future for Jeannie. We'll get into that next. So as we know, Andy, that there was a language in the sale deal between the bus family and Mark Walter that Jeannie would stay on as governor. I believe it was for a five-year term. And there was some speculation as to whether or not she'd see the end of it. But at the very least, it was written into the arrangement. So Kobe Price of the California Post asked that to Bob Eiger on Wednesday. And Bob Eiger replied, we have every intention to honor the agreement that was made between Mark and Jeannie.

If things change, they'll change. This is a caveat on top of a caveat. Those two combined makes me feel like, look, if we like what Jeannie's doing, great, but we don't feel married to this arrangement if nothing else on an interpersonal level, the way Mark Walter likely did. And there's also a question of whether or not Jeannie wants to work for that. I mean, like, because here's the thing. There was a, again, an existing relationship between Mark Walter and the bus family,

where Jeannie obviously felt comfortable with Mark Walter. I mean, I don't, I was about to say something. Like, I don't know if Jeannie would have been, and the family would have been, would have been comfortable selling to Iger and Kushner as compared to Mark Walter. Now, for $12.5 billion, I think they might have learned to become comfortable with it, But, you know, just comparing the two side by side, I suspect they would have been much more willing and happy to sell to Walter than to these guys. Yes. So 100%.

I don't know. I mean, like, it's both do they want to keep Jeannie? And does Jeannie want to work for them? Because like there's really not much of a connection in the same way. And Jeannie values the interpersonal a lot. see front office hers. I mean, when you look at the names who have been there forever, the connection point is strong personal relationship with Jeannie,

much more than what they bring to the table as executives. You know, what I think, you know, it's in Jeannie's favor, if you're going to hire somebody to be the governor of the Lakers and you just like stacked up somebody's resume, like, Jeannie be a good person for that. Like she, she's quite good at that part of the job. It's the basketball operation side. And where I think what this does is while the speculation right now was, well, does Jeannie continue as governor?

I think longer term to me, it puts Rob's position in much more significant peril, good as he's been at self-preservation. This becomes a taller task. And I just think there's going to there could be more of a drive for quick turnover, quick, you know, changes because like you said, there's going to be a gap between them and they can really do big things. I don't know. If they want to make an imprint, they're going to do it quickly. Yeah. I mean, Rob's gift for self-preservation respectfully has 95% been demonstrated underneath a boss that it's very clear, has wanted to keep him, basically at all costs. So, you know, his real special set of skills like Brian Mills and Taken, he was maybe starting to show that off under Mark Walter's ownership, but it really hasn't been that much time. This is really going to be a test of it because these people have absolutely, to the best of anybody's knowledge, I'm sure he had met Bob Eager over the years, but no allegiance or any time. Rob's famously been to Disneyland a lot of times.

Like we've seen the photos. I hadn't really thought about it as much this, you know, today because I've always felt that under the old arrangement, old as it was, that ultimately, you know, JJ was more secure than Rob. And Rob was relatively secure for the time being. I still think JJ's probably relatively secure. But this year becomes like a really significant audition for a lot. lot of people, I think, around, you know, who are, whether on the business side or certainly the

basketball side, to prove that this sort of off-season overhaul has the team going in a good direction. I could certainly see a scenario in which Polinka, maybe things aren't going great, whatever, it feels a little pressure, a little panicky, is that sale gets closer to being official. It changes, I think, to me, at least, the stakes of this season from a front office standpoint. Absolutely. It also was a very unfortunate time for Rob Belinka, not to be armed with many assets in order to make that type of perhaps career preserving move. I mean, I remember at the time when Rob Polinka got his latest extension, it struck a lot of people as odd, just in the sense of he hadn't performed that strongly. And there really was

no impetus to do this. Plus, he gave himself a player option. Well, he can opt in to the last couple of years of his deal. Yeah, he negotiated with himself very well. In retrospect, given that the sale happened relatively soon after that extension came, and, you know, there had been reports of kind of the golden parachute money given to the rambi or, you know, thank you for your long terms of service. and also if you end up getting blown out by the Walter group, this is your safety net.

You wonder how much Rob Polinka's extension was job security versus Golden Parachute versus a little bit from column A, a little bit from column B. And in truth, we don't know yet what their basketball worldview is. I mean, Bob, I, you know, outside of being, you know, again, by multiple accounts, a massive NBA fan. and he has a very good relationship with Adam Silver and, you know, from the time with Disney and ESPN and the NBA, and, you know, one of many reasons that this sale is going to undoubtedly get approved if for no other reason than all those other owners will want their slice of that very large pie.

There's no reason to believe this isn't going to happen. But, yeah, like all of these guys are going, you know, whether you're talking Rob, whether you're talking JJ, whether you're talking probably players on the roster, not named Luca or Donchich. Like everybody is going to really have to show their worth and do it for, you know, bosses that they probably don't have as strong of an idea of who they are or what they want, other than success, obviously like a lot of things, if you win a lot of games that will, yeah, solve the problem.

Buy you some time, if not smooth everything over. You know, and it's, we, we don't, we didn't know if it was going to, the Walter era was going to work for the Dodgers or for the Lakers either in the same way that it worked for the Dodgers, it's different sport, different structures or whatever. We just know that the, the processes and the, in the sort of template on how they make decisions was something that was being actively imported from one organization or the other being, you know, Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidie were in the front office talking to Rob Polinka and the rocket scientists not to tell them which free agents. they're supposed to get or break down tape, but to talk about process, to talk about organizational structures, talk about how you make players feel welcome, how you, where you spend your money, where you don't, all these other things. No one knows how the Kushner-Iger-led group will do that. They don't have the same level of one-person capital that Mark Walter did. So there's just, there's a lot of questions.

that we don't know about. So, you know, again, as more reporting comes out that a lot of it led by Bloomberg, that, you know, again, this sale was, you know, the external factors with this insurance investigation and all that with Mark Walter's group might just make paying that stuff down easier. But the new group, we just don't know anything about them. And it's happened so quickly. And without any possible, we'd speculated for a long time, like, hey, if the Lakers

whoever went on sale, who, might buy them. And Mark Walter was always the first name that both, you know, people, the media came up with, but like fans kind of like, what about that guy? Like, he'd be great. And so setting aside, you know, people know who Baguiger is and fewer people know who Josh Kushner is. And I don't know them actually as much through the, the failed FIFA thing that happened a couple weeks ago, which is, by the way, an extension of that, you know, what was the name of the, of the venture capital group. It's like some of these sports investments that they're making that are supposed to be AI-proof guy.

They make sense to try to buy a piece of the World Cup. But, you know, we'll see. Drive eternal. Yes, thank you. And, you know, he's got his hands in a lot of things and he's a very wealthy guy.

But, you know, there's just a lot of stuff we don't know about. One thing we do know about Andy, though, is that Russell Westbrook, who has not been able to hook up with a team this offseason, has chosen to retire. Yeah. And,

Russ has been, you know, polarizing in a lot of ways his entire career and certainly his one and a half seasons with the Lakers. I wouldn't even say they were polarizing. Everyone pretty much agreed it did not work. Everybody was on one poll. Yeah. You know, it was unbridled disaster. It was arguably the most disaster. It's actually one of the least polarizing things in Lakers history in terms of fan opinion. Yeah.

I mean, there's no way around. It arguably most disastrous trade and franchise. history. It closed the LeBron and AD window for all intents and purposes. The relationship between LeBron slash clutch and the Lakers never the same afterwards. But at the same time, and, you know, the effects of that is still being negotiated by the Lakers. And there is no way around this, even several years after the fact. But Russell Westbrook, the career, was phenomenally, you know, MVP, nine-time All-Star, nine-time All-NBA, two-time scoring champ three-time assist champ. And I wonder how many people have had multiple, you know,

scoring and assist titles, top 75, 18 seasons. His teams made the playoffs 14 times, which is impressive. Like the Wizards lone playoff appearance since 2018 is the one year Russ played with them. Also, too, and I just think this is important to bring up, especially on a day we were talking about earlier. People are Laker fans wondering about. the connection or lack thereof between their franchise and the impending new owners, Russell Westbrook was a man of Los Angeles. Like he loved this city and he loved to do great things for this city. Like the Westbrook Academy that he founded in South L.A.

It's a charter school for middle and high school kids. I've been there because my daughter had a middle school volleyball game there. It is a beautiful campus. It's an impressive place. TEC Lymer, which was an advocacy group in South L.A., bridging digital divides between underserved communities, Thanksgiving meals in L.A. annually, basketball camps, wildfire fun in 2025, summer camp style programs. Like, he really gave a lot to this city that he was born and raised and played his college ball in. He also, too, for all of Russ's controversies, he was always

renown as a great teammate. Players genuinely and consistently loved playing with Russ. I know Austin Reeves talked a lot about how Russell Westbrook helped him early in his career. He was really well known for helping out young players, giving him advice, working out with them, buying stuff. And also, I remember, too, and it's just an example of him being a good teammate, Russ famously hated dealing with media.

Oh? But years ago, I was doing a piece about nine. Nick Collison is just sort of this very unusual one franchise role player. And I was at a game at Staples. Thunder were either playing the Lakers or the Clippers. I don't remember which. But to get comments from Russell Westbrook about Collison. And I waited for everybody to ask their normal postgame questions.

And then the Thunderperson shut it down. Russ is done. And when Russ was done, Russ was done. But I went up to him and asked him, hey, I'm doing a piece about Nick Collison. And he immediately just said, I'll talk about Nick. And he gave me like, you know, five to 10 minutes off to the side talking about Collison. And again, just the time with the Lakers was what it was and it was awful. But it really is a career that's worth celebrating.

Again, particularly for fans of Los Angeles and Los Angeles sports. 100% agree. Surefire first ballot hall famer. So congratulations on a great career. Locked on Lakers on YouTube is where you can hang out with over 39,000 subscribers. Do make sure you're subscribing to the audio product as well. because as you know, sometimes teams get sold, like totally unexpectedly, and we have to record an extra podcast, and if you're not subscribing,

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