The Lakers got flipped?! What we know about the decision to sell, and how the league reacted
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- Mark Walter sold his controlling interest in the Lakers to venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger at a $12.5 billion valuation, less than 10 months after the NBA board of governors approved his $10 billion purchase of the Buss family's stake on Oct. 30, 2025.
- Walter realized a $2.5 billion profit in just 14 months, with multiple league sources suggesting the sale may be driven by an ongoing federal investigation into TWG Global, which the Wall Street Journal reported involves allegations of $16 billion in undisclosed loans to Walter's insurance firm Delaware Life.
- Bob Iger told The California Post the new ownership group intends to honor Walter's agreement keeping Jeanie Buss as acting governor for at least five more years, though one agent monitoring the Lakers interpreted Iger's conditional language as giving Rob Pelinka roughly six months to prove himself after his recent multiyear extension.
- Luka Doncic was not consulted about the sale but plans to video conference with Iger and Kushner from Slovenia next week, marking his fifth different ownership group after Mark Cuban sold the Mavericks to Patrick Dumont and the Adelson family prior to his February 2025 trade to Los Angeles.
- Chris Paul is being floated by multiple league sources as a potential addition to the Lakers' front office given his close friendship with Iger, who hosted a 2023 book launch for Paul's memoir and was visited by Paul at Disney's Burbank office in March to mark Iger's 52-year run ending.
- Lakers president of business operations Lon Rosen was a key Dodgers executive before crossing over in February 2025, deepening the cross-sport front-office pipeline between Walter's baseball and basketball properties that included Andrew Friedman and Farhan Zaidi advising on basketball operations.
- LeBron James had already left the Lakers to sign with the Philadelphia 76ers last month before the resell, leaving Doncic as the unquestioned face of a franchise whose $2.5 billion appreciation in less than a year reinforces the value of Doncic's brand in the 27-year-old's first ownership change as a Laker.
Why it matters: Walter walked away with a $2.5 billion profit in 14 months while the franchise's on-court identity was still settling post-LeBron, but the WSJ-reported federal probe into TWG Global and the $16 billion in undisclosed Delaware Life loans gave league insiders immediate reason to suspect the resell was forced rather than opportunistic. For Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka, the conditional nature of Iger's public commitment to the existing front office means a six-month evaluation window before any structural changes arrive.
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