Jeanie Buss is expected to walk into the NBA’s Board of Governors meetings in New York on Monday as the Lakers’ governor, and the deal that could make it her last such trip is not expected to come up for a vote.
Both of those details come from Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal, who reported Monday that league sources do not anticipate a vote this week on Mark Walter’s proposed $12.5 billion sale of the Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger. Friend added that one rival governor, asked whether Buss would show, answered simply.
“I assume Jeanie will,” the governor said.
That leaves the Lakers in an unusual spot. The person representing them at the league’s most important offseason gathering is fighting her own family in court to keep the job, and the transaction that would settle the question is moving on a separate timeline that runs through a Los Angeles courtroom in December.
What the board is and isn’t deciding this week
Any transfer of an NBA franchise has to clear the Board of Governors, and the bar is high. Three-quarters of the 30 governors, or 23 votes, have to approve an ownership change. Walter’s own purchase cleared that bar unanimously last October.
The Kushner-Iger deal has additional hurdles before it reaches that stage. ESPN reported in August that Kushner must divest his limited stake in the Miami Heat before the approval process, and that the league’s review could take time.
Friend’s reporting Monday put a finer point on it: The Lakers situation, like the Clippers’ cap-circumvention fallout, is expected to be handled in committee rather than in the general session, where the agenda is built around NBA Europe, expansion and local television.
In other words, the Lakers will be discussed in New York this week. They just will not be voted on.
The 15 percent line the league already signed off on
The reason Buss’ seat is in question at all is a league rule, not a family one. NBA guidelines require a team’s governor to hold at least 15 percent of the franchise.
The Buss family trust holds 17.8 percent of the Lakers, and that stake is what keeps Buss above the line. What makes this week’s meeting striking is that the league put its own name on the arrangement less than a year ago.
When the Board of Governors approved Walter’s purchase on Oct. 30, 2025, the NBA’s official release stated that Buss would remain governor for at least five years after closing, and Adam Silver went out of his way to say so.
“I am thrilled that Jeanie will remain the team’s Governor and an active and engaged member of our league,” Silver said in the release.
Iger echoed that commitment after his group’s deal with Walter was announced, telling the California Post he intended to honor the five-year arrangement. Days later, five of the six Buss siblings voted to sell the trust’s entire 17.8 percent stake to Kushner and Iger, a move that Buss is contesting on the grounds that a 2017 court order binds the trustees to keep her eligible as controlling owner.
The commissioner’s five-year sentence and the siblings’ sale cannot both hold. Which one gives is not up to the board.
Why Dec. 8 matters more than Tuesday
Buss took the dispute to Los Angeles Superior Court in late August with a petition asking a judge to enforce the 2017 order and remove her sister Janie and brother Joey as co-trustees. The first hearing was set for Nov. 5, then pushed back after her attorney, Adam Streisand, requested a continuance for scheduling reasons.
It is now scheduled for Dec. 8. That date is the real deadline in this story, and it explains why this week’s meeting can feel both consequential and anticlimactic at once.
The family dispute is not expected to affect the proposed sale itself, since Walter’s roughly two-thirds stake changes hands regardless of what the trust does with its 17.8 percent. But the timeline for the deal closing remains unclear.
So there are three clocks running. The board has to vote on the sale, and Friend’s sourcing says that is not happening this week.
The court has to rule on whether the trust can sell out from under Buss, and that is not before Dec. 8. And the Lakers have to open training camp in two weeks and a regular season on Oct. 20 under whatever ownership structure exists at the time, which for now means Walter as majority owner and Buss as governor.
If the sequence holds, Buss will represent the Lakers at the season’s opening tip, and the question Friend raised, whether this is her final Board of Governors meeting, may not be answerable until the league’s next session.
Silver, the room and the other L.A. team
Buss has been attending these meetings since the 1990s, and Friend’s reporting describes her relationships in the room, particularly with Silver, as a genuine asset: He wrote that she carries almost universal support among her fellow governors.
That is consistent with an earlier SBJ report that Silver was expected to try to calm the Buss family situation, though nothing in Monday’s reporting suggests the league can override a trust document or a court.
The contrast across town is hard to miss. The Clippers’ governor will not be in New York at all.
Steve Ballmer is barred from league activities for a year as part of the cap-circumvention penalties the NBA announced Sept. 2, and it was unclear Monday whether alternate governor Dennis Wong would represent the team either. Most expect chief commercial officer Scott Sonnenberg to fill the role for now.
Ballmer did his part to lower the temperature before the session opened, posting a statement on X late Sunday.
For my Los Angeles Clippers followers
This has been a very difficult time for everybody associated with the Clippers, and for that, I have sincere regrets. I want to apologize to our fans, employees, and my fellow NBA team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has…
— Steve Ballmer (@Steven_Ballmer) September 14, 2026
“I want to apologize to our fans, employees, and my fellow NBA team owners for the distraction and distress this matter has caused,” Ballmer wrote.
One Los Angeles team, then, arrives with its governor suspended and its front office under a federal inquiry. The other arrives with its governor present, its ownership in escrow and its future decided by a probate judge.
Silver has spent a career keeping meetings like this on the agenda, and Friend’s reporting suggests he will try again.
What to watch Tuesday
Silver is expected to hold a news conference Tuesday afternoon, and he will be asked about Walter, Kushner, Iger and Buss whether the sale is on the docket or not. The most useful answers would be a timeline for the board’s review and any signal on whether the league views the governor question as settled by the Walter-era agreement or reopened by the trust vote.
Neither is likely to come with a date attached. But for a franchise that has changed hands twice in 14 months and has not yet finished the second sale, even a vague answer from the commissioner would be the first official word on when the Lakers’ ownership picture stops moving.
