Jeanie Buss: What Happened to the Lakers Owner in 2026

Jeanie Buss is still the governor and controlling owner of the Los Angeles Lakers — as of Tuesday 18 August 2026, nothing that would remove her has actually happened yet.

What did happen is that five of her siblings voted to sell the piece of the team that keeps her in the job, and her lawyer told their lawyers the vote does not count.

Is Jeanie Buss still the Lakers owner?

Yes, today. She holds the titles of governor and controlling owner, and the transaction that would end that has neither closed nor been voted on by the league.

Three separate things have to happen before she is out, and none of them has:

The gap between “five siblings voted to sell” and “Jeanie Buss is no longer the owner” is where this entire story lives. A lot of coverage collapsed it into one event.

What happened on 17 August 2026?

Five of the six Buss siblings voted to sell the family trust’s remaining 17.8% stake in the Lakers to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner. Jeanie Buss abstained.

The five were Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse. The sale would be at the same $12.5 billion valuation Iger and Kushner had agreed with Mark Walter days earlier, and it would take their combined ownership of the club to roughly 83%.

The family put out a statement through ESPN:

“We have decided as a family to sell the remaining Buss Family Trust shares to the Bob Iger group as part of the ongoing transaction. We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles; but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can.”

Then her lawyer, Adam Streisand, sent a letter to the law firms representing the five, saying any such vote “would be and is void”. A person familiar with her thinking, speaking anonymously, said she wants to hold the stake both for valuation reasons and to keep the governorship.

An earlier vote among the siblings, months before this one, had only three in favour of selling. The number moved.

Why does 15% decide her job?

Because NBA rules require a governor — the league’s formal term for a club’s controlling owner — to hold at least 15% of the franchise. The trust’s 17.8% sits just above that line, and selling it puts her under.

This is why the change of majority owner did not remove her and this sale would. When the family sold control to Mark Walter, they kept a stake — and the stake, not the title, is what the rule looks at. Her position survived a $10 billion sale and a $12.5 billion sale. It does not survive the family selling the last 17.8%.

What does the 2017 court order actually say?

Her attorney’s position is that the trust’s shares cannot be sold without all three co-trustees agreeing, and that the co-trustees are obliged to vote in a way that keeps the stake above 15% so that she remains controlling owner.

The passage he quoted:

“No sale of the JAB Trust’s 17.8% ownership interest in the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. can be effectuated without approval by the current co-trustees, i.e., Jeanie, Janie and Joey Buss. Pursuant to the JAB Trust and the attached Court Order, the co-trustees are bound to vote the Los Angeles Lakers, Inc. shares to ensure that the minimum 15% ownership requirement is maintained in order to ensure that Jeanie Buss may remain Controlling Owner.”

Doing otherwise, he wrote, “would constitute a breach of trust, breach of fiduciary duty and be in contempt of court”. He has said that if the siblings push ahead he will go to court seeking contempt findings and injunctions.

Two details make this argument sharper than a simple family disagreement. The first is that two of the three co-trustees — Janie and Joey — are among the five who voted to sell, so the claim is not only that the vote lacked her consent but that their votes themselves breached the trust. The second is the source of that 2017 order.

It came out of the last time this family fought over the team, and it ended with the opposite result. In March 2017, after Jeanie Buss removed Jim Buss as executive vice-president of basketball operations and fired general manager Mitch Kupchak, her brothers called a board meeting she read as an attempt to unseat her. She went to court. The fight ended in an agreement filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in which Jim and Johnny accepted her as controlling owner for the rest of her life, and Janie replaced Jim as a trustee.

The attorney who handled that settlement for her was Adam Streisand. At the time he wrote that it was hard to imagine a better outcome, and that Lakers fans could go back to hoping for championships instead of favourable court rulings. Nine years later he is the one threatening to go back to court.

How did the six Buss siblings end up split?

The family’s stake sits in a single vehicle, the JAB Trust, with three of the six siblings serving as its co-trustees — an arrangement that has now produced two open conflicts in nine years.

Joey and Jesse are the closest thing to a subplot here. Joey held the title of alternate governor and vice-president of research and development; Jesse was assistant general manager. Between them they ran the scouting operation that turned up Austin Reaves, Alex Caruso, Kyle Kuzma, Jordan Clarkson, Larry Nance Jr. and Max Christie. Both were let go in November 2025, weeks after the Walter sale closed, in what the club described as a reorganisation of basketball operations. Both kept their ownership shares — which is precisely why their votes count now.

How did the Lakers change hands twice in ten months?

The family sold control to Mark Walter in a deal that closed in autumn 2025, and Walter agreed to sell to Iger and Kushner in August 2026, before the first anniversary.

When the league approved the Walter deal, its own announcement stated that Jeanie Buss would remain governor “for a period of at least five years following the closing of the transaction” — which runs to roughly 2030. Adam Silver thanked the family for 46 years of leadership.

That five-year commitment is the thing everyone points to, and it is also the thing that does not solve her problem. A commitment that she will be governor cannot survive her losing the shares the league requires a governor to hold. Which is exactly why her attorney’s letter is aimed at the trustees and the stake, rather than at the promise.

Bob Iger, asked about it after his deal was reported, said his group had every intention of honouring the agreement between Walter and Buss — and then added that if things change, they change.

What happens next?

The next fixed date is the NBA Board of Governors meeting on 15 and 16 September in New York, where the change of majority ownership goes to a vote. Any court action would run on its own clock.

Things to watch, in the order they can happen:

• A filing. Her attorney has described going to court for contempt findings and injunctions as a next step if the siblings proceed. Nothing has been filed as of 18 August.
• The league vote. An NBA ownership transfer needs approval from at least three-quarters of the Board of Governors.
• Whether the 17.8% is part of what the league approves. The majority sale and the family stake are separate pieces, and the dispute attaches only to the second.
• Whether anyone moves first. The family statement — “while we still can” — reads as urgency. The letter reads as an attempt to freeze things.

What to take from it

• “Jeanie Buss is out” is a forecast, not a fact. It describes what happens if a disputed sale completes and the league signs off. Neither has occurred.
• The number that matters is 15%, not $12.5 billion. She kept her job through two record-breaking sales of the club. It is the small remaining family stake that decides her position.
• The 2017 order cuts both ways in the coverage but only one way in the letter. Her side reads it as a binding instruction to the trustees. The other side has not publicly answered that reading.
• Two of the three co-trustees voted to sell. That is the specific fact her argument has to overcome, and it is why the dispute is about fiduciary duty rather than a simple headcount.
• Watch mid-September. It is the first scheduled moment when someone other than the Buss family gets a say.

For where the club itself sits this season, see our look at the 76ers at Lakers Christmas fixture . For another NBA career that ended on its owner’s terms this month, see Russell Westbrook’s retirement decision .

Sources

Checked 18 August 2026. No affiliate links, and no payment was received for any link on this page.