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Over the last year or so, whispers have run rampantly throughout league circles about the future of the Los Angeles Lakers. Sure, Mark Walter had been positioning himself fairly aggressively to one day buy the franchise, but that would also require Jeanie Buss selling it, something very few people thought would ever happen. To take it a step further, the other 29 teams in the NBA pretty desperately wanted this day to never come, as the Lakers may now finally be run like the multi-billion-dollar behemoth organization it actually is.
“The Lakers are a sleeping giant,” a West executive said a year or so ago, when these rumors really started swirling. “It's pretty incredible they've been as successful as they've been as the league has grown around them. If they ever started actually investing in ways their competitors are, it's over.”
Well, that day has come. Walter and TWG, the ownership group that has transformed the Los Angeles Dodgers into the juggernaut they are now, controls majority ownership of the Lakers. Their competitors are bracing for what comes next.
It should be mentioned the NBA is going to be a little more complicated to dominate than MLB as there is a salary cap in basketball that doesn't exist in baseball. Deferred money also isn't allowed in the NBA, which has been one of the Dodgers' most useful tools during their run. No one is claiming Walter is going to come in and illegally bring in Victor Wembanyama, Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo to team up with Luka Doncic and LeBron James. That lineup wouldn't even make sense.
What teams do fear are the ways TWG can invest in the organization that aren't salary cap-controlled.
How Lakers have operated under Jeanie Buss
Under the Buss family, the Lakers have consistently ranked among the thinnest organizations in the sport. Employees across the franchise are expected to multitask to some pretty incredible extents. Most notably, Rob Pelinka operates as both the team's president of basketball operations and general manager. Immediately under him, Jesse Buss is the team's assistant general manager and director of scouting. Joey Buss' official title is the Vice President of Research and Development. He also is the president/CEO of the South Bay Lakers.
The Lakers have also lacked in some pretty standard aspects as an NBA organization. They don't employ a specific pro scouting department. Those responsibilities are shared among basketball ops personnel. They haven't employed a shooting coach since Mike Penberthy left in 2022. Their analytics and video departments are as thin as it gets, compared to their counterparts around the league.
At one point, Miles Simon was acting as an assistant coach with the parent team while also tasked with being the head coach of the South Bay Lakers.
Speaking of assistant coaches, league sources also say the Lakers pay among the lowest salaries for such hires, not even counting the cost of living in the greater Los Angeles area. It has led to a deficit in that regard for years running. When was the last time a Lakers head coach was the hot, young candidate teams were falling over themselves to hire? It simply hasn't happened.
Under Buss' stewardship, the Lakers have doubled and tripled down on her close-knit circle of friends. As that setup has come under greater scrutiny, they've only banded more closely together, often putting more work into finding leaks in the organization than ensuring the leaked information is the kind of stuff their fans would be excited to hear.
This is all going to change, and then some.
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How Mark Walter could turn Lakers into Dodgers
Walter's first move as owner of the Dodgers was to bring in Stan Kasten and Andrew Friedman to head up the baseball operations team. Friedman built the Tampa Bay Rays, who used Moneyball tactics to get to real contention in the same division as big spenders like the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Walter also hired promising executives like Farhan Zaidi and Alex Anthopoulos to bolster that front office. The Dodgers have invested heavily into the medical and development teams, which has helped them find talent from baseball's scrap heaps and turn them into the type of players who have helped win 100 games perennially.
Under Walter, it's not out of the question that the Lakers could make a Godfather offer to Sam Presti, Masai Ujiri or any other elite executive to come in and run the team more consistently than it has operated under Pelinka — who is known for incredible highs (the 2020 championship, landing Luka Doncic) and also brutal lows (the Russell Westbrook trade, letting Alex Caruso walk for nothing).
The Dodgers hired Dave Roberts (who had never managed an MLB team before, either) as their manager and also have consistently employed some of the best supporting coaches in all of baseball. This has led to Roberts becoming arguably the best manager in the sport. The Lakers definitely value JJ Redick as a young, promising head coach, but the chances of him reaching his full potential increase greatly while surrounded by more highly regarded assistants.
Across the league, the 29 other teams have not-so-quietly dreaded this day. Buss is very well liked in league circles because she genuinely is one of the nicest people in her position anywhere in professional sports. Anyone who has had basically any interaction walks away from it marveling at how humble she is despite literally owning the Lakers. She, like everyone, however, has her blind spots. According to reports, she'll continue in some capacity as the team's governor. TWG will help ensure those spots are brought into greater focus.
Think of it this way: The Lakers have been insanely successful as an organization since Jerry Buss bought the team in 1979. Steadily, they've been passed up by some of the more modern teams in the league, but have still racked up championship after championship nonetheless. Now, envision a world in which the organization that attracts the most star power of any team in the NBA also has the resources to maximize each window they get with those stars, starting with Doncic and LeBron James.
Yeah, that's what the rest of the NBA was hoping to avoid.
