The first full day of the Bob Iger and Josh Kushner era in Los Angeles produced its first intriguing name, and it belongs to a player Lakers fans spent 15 years wondering about. Hours after news broke that Iger and Kushner agreed to buy the Lakers at a record $12.5 billion valuation, ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne pointed to Chris Paul as someone worth watching as the new ownership group takes shape.
Before anything else, it is worth being precise about what was said, because the aggregation machine is already stretching it. Shelburne did not report that the Lakers are pursuing Paul, and she did not report that a role exists or has been discussed.
What she described is a long personal relationship between Paul and the franchise’s incoming co-owner, along with her own expectation of where it leads.
What Shelburne actually said
Speaking on ESPN’s “NBA Today” on Wednesday, Shelburne named Paul among the people to monitor around the new ownership group, describing Iger as something of a mentor to the recently retired point guard and noting his availability.
Dave McMenamin: "JJ Redick got an extension after his rookie year as a head coach with the Lakers. My understanding is it aligns his contract with Rob Pelinka's…I think JJ Redick's probably in a really good spot here…but will have to see where all this goes"
Ramona… pic.twitter.com/MhXDeumtbA
— Oh No He Didn't (@ohnohedidnt24) August 12, 2026
“I don’t know what that means for him, but I expect they’ll be talking,” Shelburne said.
That is the entire hard-news content of the story so far, and it is worth taking seriously anyway, because the relationship underneath it is more substantial than a talking-head connection.
Why the Iger connection is real
Iger’s basketball fandom in Los Angeles predates his Lakers ownership by decades, and he held Clippers season tickets for years during the stretch when Paul was running the franchise’s best teams — which is where the personal relationship took root. The sharper detail, though, is that the two are already business partners.
Iger and his wife, Willow Bay, have been controlling owners of Angel City FC since 2024, and Paul bought a minority stake in the same club last year. When Shelburne says she expects the two to be talking, she is describing men who already sit on the same cap table.
Paul has also been open about his post-playing ambitions running through boardrooms rather than benches. In an interview with Forbes last year, he described entering the league at 19 without a business mindset and framed his next chapter around growing his brand and his team, which is precisely the profile of a person a new ownership group might want inside the building in some capacity.
The trade the NBA never let happen
The reason this story lands differently in Los Angeles than anywhere else is that Paul was a Laker once, for about 48 hours, in December 2011. The Lakers had agreed to acquire him from the New Orleans Hornets in a three-team deal before the league office, which owned the Hornets at the time, killed the trade, with then-commissioner David Stern’s “basketball reasons” explanation entering NBA lore on the spot.
Paul went to the Clippers instead, built Lob City across the hallway and spent six seasons as the best point guard in the building the Lakers shared with him. 15 years later, the franchise that was never allowed to employ him is owned by one of his closest allies in American business.
Nobody needs to overstate the symmetry for it to resonate with a fan base that has never fully let the veto go.
How Paul’s career ended
Paul, 41, retired on Feb. 13 after a 21-season career, announcing the decision on Instagram on the opening day of All-Star Weekend. The ending was ugly in ways that make a fresh start appealing.
He had signed a one-year deal with the Clippers intending it as a farewell season, but the team sat at 5-16 when it sent him away from the roster on Dec. 3 amid reported friction with head coach Tyronn Lue and president of basketball operations Lawrence Frank, then dealt him to Toronto at the trade deadline in a move both sides understood as procedural.
The Raptors waived him without him ever reporting, and the retirement announcement followed within hours. None of that touches the resume.
Paul walks away as a 12-time All-Star, an 11-time All-NBA selection, a nine-time All-Defensive pick, a five-time assists champion and a member of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, with 12,552 career assists that trail only John Stockton in league history. He reflected on the transition in his announcement.
“The game of basketball will forever be engrained in the DNA of my life,” Paul wrote.
What a role could look like
If the two men do talk, the natural landing spot is some form of front-office or advisory position, given that Paul spent two decades as one of the sport’s most respected on-court organizers and has no coaching aspirations on record. There is also a familiar face already in the building, since Lakers head coach JJ Redick spent years as Paul’s Clippers teammate during the Lob City era.
On the same “NBA Today” broadcast, ESPN’s Dave McMenamin noted that Redick received a contract extension after his first season that aligned his deal with president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s, which speaks to a front office whose current leadership structure the new owners inherit rather than a vacuum Paul would fill.
The honest ceiling on all of this remains exactly where Shelburne left it. There is no reported offer, no reported conversation and no reported role, and the sale itself still requires approval from the NBA’s Board of Governors before Iger and Kushner formally control anything. What exists is a genuine friendship, a business partnership already on the books, a retired legend who has said publicly that his next act is business and a franchise that owes him a 15-year-old apology.
Those ingredients do not guarantee a story, but they are more than enough reason to keep the name on the board, and if the talking Shelburne expects turns into something concrete, Lakers fans will be able to say the strangest subplot of sale day was visible from the first afternoon.
