At some point over the next several months, Josh Kushner (the brother of Jared) and Bob Iger (the former Disney chief) will become the majority owners of the Los Angeles Lakers when their deal with current majority owner Mark Walter is final. The question is whether Kushner and Iger will ultimately own 83 or 100 percent of the team, and the answer will depend on how the family drama occurring among the people who own the remaining 17 percent plays out. Those people are, of course, the adult children of former Lakers owner Jerry Buss, who bought the franchise in 1979 and ran it as a family business with the six children he named Johnny, Jim, Jeanie, Janie, Joey, and Jesse. (Buss’s first child, Lee, who was given up for adoption, is not involved with the team.) Which Busses want to sell and which Busses want to hang on? Where do Kushner and Iger stand in all this? And has Jeanie ever told one of her siblings they should have never been born? Herewith, a guide to the drama.
Six days after the deal between Walter (who bought the team only a year ago) and Kushner/Iger was announced, five Buss siblings voted for the Buss Family Trust to sell its remaining shares in the Lakers — which amount to 17.8 percent of the team — to the soon-to-be majority owners. The five siblings voting to sell were Johnny, Jim, Janie, Joey, and Jesse; through her lawyer, Jeanie — who holds the official position of team governor, which she would lose in the event of a sale — responded by claiming her siblings don’t have the right to sell.
