The ownership of the Los Angeles Lakers is changing hands. On Wednesday, the Buss family, which has owned the team since 1979, reportedly agreed to sell a majority share of it to Mark Walter, the CEO of Guggenheim Partners, for a valuation of $10 billion.
While the Lakers have become one of the most prestigious sports franchises and brands under the Buss family’s ownership, most of their success during that time came when the late Dr. Jerry Buss was their owner from 1979 to 2013. When Dr. Buss passed away in 2013, control was passed down to his children, and the Lakers have gone through many peaks and valleys since, with the valleys becoming more numerous than the peaks.
A lot of the criticism of how the franchise has been run has centered around the perception that it has operated like a mom-and-pop small business, especially since the Buss family isn’t particularly cash-rich. In fact, an ESPN report on Wednesday’s sale outlined several concerning ways in which the team has pinched pennies.
Many remember how it failed to hire Tyronn Lue to be its head coach in 2019 after Lue wanted a little more money and a longer contract. But the other examples of what ESPN called its “miserly traits” don’t reflect well on how it has been run.
One instance had to do with one of its assistant coaches.
“An assistant coach was not approved to stay at the same hotel as the player he was traveling to work out with in the offseason because the room was too expensive,” wrote Tim Bontemps and Dave McMenamin.
Prior to the NBA lockout in 2011, a sizable number of team staffers and employees were laid off, including one longtime member of the front office.
“Former assistant GM Ronnie Lester’s contract was not renewed during the NBA lockout in 2011, a financial decision and one of many in a rash of layoffs or nonrenewals.”
Plus, in one move that resulted in lots of criticism, the Lakers asked for financial help from the government during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic through a program that was designed to help small businesses, not world-class sports franchises.
“The team applied for federal relief through the Small Business Administration’s Paycheck Protection Program during the COVID-19 hiatus. After considerable backlash, they later returned the $4.6 million to the government.”
As NBA teams started to utilize analytics more and more in recent years, the Lakers lagged behind. They were the only team in the league that wasn’t represented at the Sloan Analytics Conference in 2013. That did start to change, however, last offseason, when they hired coach JJ Redick and Redick urged them to become more data-driven.
Walter has owned a sizable chunk of the Los Angeles Dodgers since 2012. At the time, the Dodgers were a franchise that enjoyed plenty of success in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and 1980s but had fallen on hard times for roughly the previous 20 years.
Under his ownership, they have won the National League West in 11 of the last 12 seasons, and they have won the World Series championship in 2020 and 2024. Walter built up the team’s analytics department, hired standout front office people such as Andrew Friedman and spared no expense in acquiring former MVPs in their primes, such as Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani.
Lakers fans, by and large, are now optimistic that similar results could lie ahead for the Purple and Gold.
This article originally appeared on LeBron Wire: ESPN report reveals how ‘miserly’ Lakers have been under Jeanie Buss
Reporting by Robert Marvi, LeBron Wire / LeBron Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
