Buss Siblings Vote to Sell Final 17.8% of the Lakers; Jeanie Buss's Lawyer Calls the Vote Void

A sale of the Buss Family Trust's remaining stake to the Bob Iger and Josh Kushner group would drop Jeanie Buss below the 15% ownership the NBA requires of a team governor. The deal still needs Board of Governors approval.

The Buss family has voted to sell its remaining 17.8% ownership stake in the Los Angeles Lakers to the incoming majority owners led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner, and an attorney for Jeanie Buss has written to her siblings' lawyers to say the vote "would be and is void." The competing accounts of the same day, August 17, 2026, were reported by NBC Los Angeles, which cited an ESPN report on the vote and a CNBC report on the letter.

The governance stake is specific. Team governor is the role that represents a franchise to the league, and it requires a qualifying ownership stake of 15% in a franchise, per NBC Los Angeles. Selling the family's remaining 17.8% would leave Jeanie Buss below that line and end her tenure as governor, a job she has held since 2013, following the death of her father, Jerry Buss.

In the letter obtained by CNBC and addressed to law firms representing her siblings, attorney Adam Streisand argued that Jeanie Buss remains the controlling shareholder and has not agreed to sell the team, CNBC reported.

The family's own statement points the other way. "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," the family said in a statement reported by ESPN. "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."

ESPN’s report describes a majority of the siblings voting to sell, and does not say how large that majority was. Jerry Buss’s six children are Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey, Jesse and Jeanie Buss; nothing in the account NBC Los Angeles relayed identifies who voted which way, and Jeanie Buss’s own attorney says she has not agreed to sell at all. Under the earlier agreement to sell a majority stake to Mark Walter, ESPN reported, Jeanie Buss would have stayed on as governor of the franchise through 2030.

What still has to happen

The transaction is not final on a family vote. Approval rests with the NBA’s Board of Governors, which next convenes in New York on September 15 and 16, 2026, according to NBC Los Angeles.

The published account does not set out the voting rules of the Buss Family Trust itself, or which instrument decides whether a majority of siblings can bind the trust's shares over the objection of the person who holds the governor's seat. That is the document the dispute turns on, and it is not in the record reported so far.

The money and the history

Iger, the former chief executive of the Walt Disney Co., and Kushner confirmed an agreement to buy the Lakers for a record $12.5 billion, NBC Los Angeles reported on August 12, 2026. That came roughly 10 months after Walter, the Los Angeles Dodgers owner, bought a majority stake in the Lakers from the Buss family for $10 billion.

Jerry Buss paid $67.5 million in 1979 for a package of three properties: the Lakers, the Kings of the NHL, and the Forum in Inglewood. His children inherited the holding when he died in 2013. Eleven of the franchise’s 17 championships were won on the family’s watch, the last of them in the 2020 season the pandemic cut short.

The siblings have been in frequent conflict since their father's death. The 2017 round began when Jeanie Buss removed Jim Buss from the top basketball job; a week later she was in court against her brothers, with Jim and Johnny moving to strip her of the controlling owner’s role.

NBC Los Angeles said it had contacted the Lakers, the Buss family and representatives for Iger and Kushner for comment.

Editor’s note, August 19, 2026: Four passages in this story have been rewritten since publication because they followed the wording of the NBC Los Angeles report too closely. No fact and no attribution changed. One of them, the sentence on the vote, had named all six siblings — Jeanie Buss included — as the majority that voted to sell; ESPN’s report, as NBC Los Angeles relays it, gives no number and does not say who voted which way. Published accounts of the vote count differ. Deadline reported that four of the six Buss siblings voted to sell. The Los Angeles Times, relaying ESPN, described a vote by the six siblings. NBC Los Angeles, also relaying ESPN, said only that a majority voted, without giving a number. Silver Screen and Roll put it at the five siblings other than Jeanie Buss. The Globe has not established which count is correct.