Five Buss siblings want to sell their Lakers stake. Jeanie Buss is fighting it.

Five of the six Buss siblings back selling the family's remaining stake to the Bob Iger and Josh Kushner group buying the Los Angeles Lakers from Mark Walter. Jeanie Buss's position rests on a 2017 trustee rule; her siblings point to a tag-along clause all six signed in 2025.

The dispute over the sale of the Los Angeles Lakers is not really a rumor story. It is a documents story, and the two documents in question were signed eight years apart. One, from 2017, is said to require three of six family trustees to agree before the team can be sold. The other, signed in 2025 when the Lakers were sold to Mark Walter, gave all six Buss siblings the right to attach their shares to any future sale by Walter.

Five of the six siblings have moved to sell the family's remaining stake to the group led by Bob Iger and Josh Kushner that is buying the team from Walter. Jeanie Buss is opposed, and may buy shares to hold on to the governor's chair. A rumor roundup published by the Lakers site Silver Screen and Roll on August 19, 2026 collected the reporting behind that split. What that roundup does not contain is the trust language itself, the tag-along clause itself, or any statement of the NBA's rules on who is designated a team's governor after an ownership transfer. Those documents have not been read here, and this piece does not describe what a governor controls without them.

The competing claims, as reported

On ESPN LA, ESPN's Dave McMenamin laid out both sides, in remarks quoted by Silver Screen and Roll.

“In 2017, there was basically documentation that Ramona Shelburne has actually shared in the last couple hours on her Instagram account that, in order for there to be a sale, three of the six trustees have to agree — the three trustees, being Jeanie Buss, Janie Buss and Joey Buss.”

McMenamin said that when the team was sold to Walter, all six siblings signed what is referred to as a tag-along provision, allowing them to attach their shares to a future sale by Walter if the new owner is interested at that valuation. Five of the six siblings voted yes on the 2025 sale, everybody but Jeanie Buss, according to sources McMenamin cited. Those siblings believe the 2025 agreement, made roughly 10 months earlier, is the precedent that should stand. Silver Screen and Roll's site also lists an item dated August 18, 2026, reporting that the Buss family released a statement rebutting Jeanie Buss and endorsing the sale of the stake.

What the standoff is already costing the roster

The practical effect is a stalled front office. On August 18, 2026, Dan Woike of The Athletic reported that the expectation around the league is that the Lakers will not make front office hires until Iger and Kushner take over, as summarized in the roundup. Woike's report cited two league sources speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to discuss the team's internal operations. The team had laid out a plan for two assistant general managers, one focused on analytics and one on player scouting. Rohan Ramadas was hired for the analytics role. The scouting and development role has not been filled, and the report said the team has made no inroads in pro scouting, with preseason games set to begin in a little more than a month.

Walter's timeline

Walter is selling elsewhere too. Liam Twomey, Simon Johnson and Matt Slater of The Athletic reported that Todd Boehly and Walter are in talks to sell their shares in the English soccer club Chelsea to Clearlake Capital. The BlueCo consortium the two men partnered in bought Chelsea for £2.3 billion from Roman Abramovich in June 2022. Silver Screen and Roll wrote that Walter has made clear he intends to have his finances “fixed” by the end of the year, and that this depends largely on the Lakers sale closing — the site also asserts, without detail, that Walter is under federal investigation.

Two questions remain open in the material: whether the 2017 trustee requirement or the 2025 tag-along clause governs, and whether the unfilled second assistant general manager job exists at all under new ownership.