🚨 EMERGENCY POD 🚨 Reaction to the Buss family selling the Lakers for $10B | The Hoop Collective

🚨 EMERGENCY POD 🚨 Reaction to the Buss family selling the Lakers for $10B | The Hoop Collective

this can end up being one of the most important things that happens to NBA hierarchy of the decade hello welcome to Collective Podcast we talk about the NBA which we’re doing on an emergency podcast here which we’ve never done before over the sale of a team to my knowledge but this is one of the biggest sales of a sports teams in American sports history joining me from down the street from me at Gamebridge Fieldhouse is Tim Bonups hello Brian i would say it’s definitionally the biggest too uh correct joining us from a few floors above him on the concourse in Gamebridge Fieldhouse it’s Ban McMahon howdy partners as usual I am well above Bonds all right so Shams Trania broke the news a short time ago uh that the Lakers were going to sell from the Bus family were going to sell majority control uh to Mark Walter and the group um led by TWW uh G Capital formerly known as Guggenheim Partners guggenheim Partners owns um the Dodgers among other things including Chelsea FC um uh two or three years ago they bought uh 27% of the Lakers um I’m going to go into aspects of the deal the key is this is going to be for a valuation of $10 billion that’s the number you’re going to see across the globe uh $10 billion for a majority control of a sports team uh it won’t actually be $10 billion it’ll be the the percentage of 10 billion that they’re going to buy they own 27% the bus family owns 67% so what I think is happening here and this is all just now coming out is the um the uh Mark Walter uh who’s the uh owner of the Dodgers will buy a percentage to take him to the majority what that percentage is we’ll see uh my guess is is that the bus family will retain some percentage and Sham says that Genie Bus will remain the governor we’ll see how long that’ll be the case um there’s a couple of things that are that I’m going to talk more about with the aspects of it but bonds for basketball fans what is the most important thing here and why are we doing this podcast right now well because it’s it’s a massive thing for basketball fans for the NBA because for a long time the Lakers would be as you I think would have described them in the past be house poor uh which as someone who bought a apartment a couple years ago for the first time I know what being house poor means which means you own something but you don’t have a lot of actual cash and the Lakers are a really rare team uh in modern sports in that the bus family the that’s owned and operated the team for the last 45 years or so basically has all their assets in the Lakers themselves they’re not you know like Steve Balmer obviously has all these other businesses the same with you know most of these other people that own these whether it’s NFL teams or NBA teams or whatever other than NFL teams or this is the case in some of them the vast majority of teams across other sports it’s a part of a bigger business empire and for the Bus family the Lakers have been the sun the moon and the stars to them on every front and so that has led the Lakers to um operate in a way that isn’t what you’d necessarily expect of a team with their star power and brand and buying power in the marketplace and if it’s a similar situation albeit in a different sport though what happened when the McCort sold the sold the Los Angeles Dodgers to Todd Walter and the rest of the Guggenheim Group several years ago you don’t have to follow much of baseball to know what’s happened since then the Dodgers have turned back into an absolute superpower after being a team that was fairly you know well a regular doormat in the National League and the Lakers obviously have had some success getting LeBron there won the title 5 years ago made the conference finals a couple years ago but they have not over the last 10 or 15 years had the success that they did over their first 50 60 years of the franchise of existence when they only missed the playoffs a couple of times and were a consistent perennial championship contender this move could potentially put the Lakers back into that kind of conversation and could put the kind of financial horsepower we’ve seen behind say the Clippers across town behind the biggest brand in the NBA and one of the biggest brands in all professional sports and has a chance to do things for the Lakers that you know they have not had the ability to do over the past 10 or 15 years yeah basically the Lakers have been the most glamorous mom and pop shop in you know the world for a while now um my question and there there’s a lot of questions around this why would Jeannie Bus remain the governor you know what exactly does that look like if she doesn’t have majority control but she’s the the final decision maker like I I Why does Why does Wick Group get to remain the governor of the Celtics because when you’re selling you get to set the parameters all right well see how that plays out there’s a lot of the the the there’s a lot of devils in the details in all these deals you you lived that through that to McMahon in Dallas where Mark Cuban famously said he is going to be fully in charge of basketball operations going forward forever more obviously he wasn’t fully in charge of basketball operations basically immediately after selling the tape so let’s just see that stuff is I think not really very important to the discussion now and about what the impact of this is going to be going forward that’s more window dressing on the much bigger deal which is that the Lakers now have as much horsepower behind them financially as any team in the league as opposed to being at the other end of that spectrum for the past several years and that means potentially a lot of different things well and it’s great to have that horsepower but as the Phoenix Suns and Matt are finding out the hard way you know spending more doesn’t guarantee success and in some ways it can it can put handcuffs on you but yeah I mean certainly luxury tax and things like that are not going to be of great concern to the Lakers moving forward more just the aprons and all those sort of things okay so why they might sell now there’s a couple of reasons that I can uh surmise one is obviously that the Celtics just sold and reset the market at $6 billion two they entered in an agreement that would allow Wickbach to be the governor which is obviously something that I think Genie Bus wanted to do because that precedent was set um three the Lakers primary source of income uh is their local TV deal um every team in the league gets the same amount of money from the national TV uh contract um the Lakers get as much as the Grizzlies um they um obviously do well with the uh Crypto.com Arena but they don’t own Crypto.com Arena mhm um so you know certainly while that that is a cash cow building they don’t own it so they make a lot of money off of their games but there are plenty of teams out there that earn money off arena deal arena sales more than the Lakers do it’s one of the reasons why Steve Balmer wanted his own arena with the Clippers because um they didn’t own it either um their local TV deal with Spectrum is the largest local television deal that’s ever been done in the history of the NBA but it pays them far and away a couple years ago when I got the books uh from the NBA uh books leaked to me um I looked at the Lakers local media revenue and the Lakers roughly made as much in one week of the season as the Grizzlies did for the whole year um off their media deal now subsequently the Grizzlies have signed a new deal i’m not saying that’s still the case but suffice to say it was a massive massive advantage the Lakers um you know some teams that are rich you know are driven by their uh by their arena that’s the Chase Center for example for the Warriors you know that is a cash machine for them you know some are driven um by their market uh and some are driven uh by uh local media but this but nobody and some are driven just by their owner like the Clippers would balmer correct a lot of them are driven by their owner and and for the Lakers that the that that local television deal is why the bus family could exist and why they could operate the team and as we’ve talked about a bunch I’ve reported on it a bunch as the RSN’s the regional sports networks across the country have all fallen off yes spec the spectrum deal is still in place with the Lakers um and with the Dodgers ironically I believe um but at some point paying an exorbitant number even for Laker that’s going to run out and when that run when that whenever that did run out the Lakers are not going to be in a position to keep off with everybody else now that is irrelevant okay so the the Lakers are still going to have to abide by the rules of the second apron of the aprons it’s not you know the thing that happened with the Dodgers when they bought them the Dodgers were operating like a mom and pop shop in an uncapped league and as soon as the Dodgers were owned by the some of the deepest pocket people in sports um and uncapped uh you all of a sudden see them you know rolling off World Series titles and having the highest payroll um Chelsea FC when um uh you know when when the partners of um of the Guggenheim bought Chelsea FC they set all kinds of records for how much money they were paying to buy players in in uh in English soccer big money comes for the for the transfer fee um it’s not like the Lakers are all of a sudden going to be able to spend um vast amounts more than anybody else on players i mean in theory you know you could build your roster up and just pay exorbitant luxury taxes but they’re not going to be able to out you know there’s rules in place where this makes a difference is that the Lakers because under the buses they operated you know more um you know shallow than than the um than the uh than the other teams they’re going to be able to invest in infrastructure they’re going to be able to invest in more player comfort they’re going to be able to invest in more scouting they’re going to be able to invest in more player development they’re going to you know um Well that’s and that’s the Yeah that’s Sorry I thought you were thought you were stopping there well that’s the important that’s the important thing to talk about like yes there’s a salary cap in baseball not there’s not a salary cap in baseball there is in the NBA but like the comparison with the Dodgers is not about they went spent money on Choi Otani and Mookie Betts and these guys it’s that they went out and hired Andrew Friedman who is the best seen as arguably the best executive in the league from the Tampa Bay Rays a team that was built on winning on the margins player development building out a organization he comes to Los Angeles and the lake the Dodgers have now the strongest and deepest organization in baseball it’s the same model that Steve Cohen when he bought the Mets for again another guy with a bazillion dollars he said we need to model the Dodgers not just in our ability to pay players but also to pay for staff and all these other things to build out another franchise that had cash poor owners that was then bought by Steve Cohen same kind of thing they want to build up the infrastructure around the team to keep up with the Clippers and the Warriors and all these other teams that have already been doing that for a very long time all right so that’s a that’s a that’s where the Lakers are going to are going to potentially change here um so all right do you want me to go into the deep nitty-gritty on this or do you think I should not do that to our listeners i mean it’s if it’s going to be window story time and I think the always window story time and you can’t tease deep nitty-gritty then not do it okay also means he wants to do it so now he’s so the Lakers before this deal the Lakers are owned by three entities the Bus family trust which as I said owns about 67% before this um Mark Walters Group which was called Guggenheim Partners but now is called TWWG Capital or TWWG Global um and Patrick Shun Shong who is at one time was the wealthiest man in California a doctor who became very wealthy creating cancer drugs he was the owner of the Los Angeles Times amongst other things those were the three uh shareholders before the Dodgers bought um uh this guy named Philip Anshuts owned the 27% stake that they previously had anuts um is a billionaire who’s based in Colorado he owns the Crypto.com arena he owns all of LA live he owns the LA Kings um why did he sell well after the Clippers bought were just announced plans to to build their arena um there was an opportunity to uh for the Lakers because the Lakers lease was ending lakers had an opportunity to go somewhere else um they elected to ressign their lease there was a time at which um the owners of the forum uh wanted the Lakers to go uh renovate the forum and go back to the forum uh but the Lakers decided to resign their lease at then Staple Center about 3 years ago uh as soon as that as soon as the guy who owned the Clipper Capcom Arena got them to reup into a long lease whatever it was 20 25 years he immediately sold the team to the Guggenheim partners as soon as that happened there was an understanding that maybe someday if Genie Bus was ever going to sell that they would have the opportunity to buy because Philip Anne Schutz had in his in his deal a um a right of first refusal that if you were going to sell he had the right to buy so that they were ever going to be sold it was probably going to be to Philip Anchettz but Philip Anch I’m not sure he wanted to pay $10 billion and he also I believe is over around 90 years old just to be in the nitty-gritty really quick it’s also the thing that Steve Pagluka the coowner of the Celtics did not have in his agreement as the I believe the second largest shareholder under Wick Group’s father Irving which is why when the Celtics were sold even though uh CPA Luke was trying to buy the team and had a pretty high bid he was not the highest bid and he could get the team could get sold to somebody else that was not the case here with the way this was set up okay uh that’s right that’s important to note um so uh if the team was ever going to be sold it was going to be sold to Mark Walter and his group that they were never in position not to buy so it was understood that if the bus is ever sold that it would be to that group it was just a matter of would they ever sell there are six bus children okay um uh four children from Jerry Bus’s first marriage two children from his second marriage they each have equal share um for them to sell they all had to they had to you know you know have a majority of them um and uh so there were some in that group who wanted to sell some in that group who didn’t want to sell so I’m sure there’s could be a whole movie made about um about how they came to the agreement to sell um the interesting thing that I want to bring up uh you guys know that I Well I’ll just wait for that um so TWWG Global in uh well two interesting things happened in April one well got extended that wasn’t that big of a surprise because uh he had done the Luca Donuch trade um but oftentimes you will see before a sale uh key people get extended um and then in late April uh TWWG Global uh announced a $15 billion fundraising effort um fundraising sounds weird capital raising uh effort and they wanted to create a fund that they would use to invest in sports um $10 billion of that money was um invested by Mubadala Capital uh Mubadala is Abu Dhabi so uh as you guys have heard me talk about Abu Dhabi and Abu Dhabi’s um deep interest in investing in the NBA and American sport um you know uh Abu Dhabi you know Mubala Capital wouldn’t be able to directly uh buy the Lakers but certainly they could invest in something to buy the Lakers um and so you know there’s a lot you know TWWG Capital Global has a lot of investors um a lot of they control a lot of money i’m not just saying that one money one piece of money goes to I think I think we should say just to be clear Mark Walter had the money to buy the buy the Lakers in this manner i’m not saying I’m not saying what you’re saying is wrong but it’s worth pointing out that it’s not necessarily a onetoone thing like the fact that uh I think it’s very relevant to point out that Abu Dhabi’s involved but the goo you know the the the Dodgers financial engine is because these guys have a ton of money and he just bought he just got an expansion formula one team he’s in like you said they Todd Bolley another guy with them is was behind Chelsea spent all this money they have a ton of money to spend so in their press release from two months ago they said that uh they plan to quote build up sizable stakes in a range of sports assets in the years leading up to this uh investment so they announced the $15 billion raise with $10 billion from Abu Dhabi to invest in sports assets and two months later they buy the Lakers for 10 billion i’m just just pointing that out um you guys know how I uh feel about Abu Dhabi i I am very interested in and how they’re interested in sports and everything like that just thought I would point that out um to anybody you also like the golf courses there uh yeah um to to anybody who might say that the reason that the Lakers are selling are selling for this money is it’s Luca Donuch effect um obviously getting Luca Donuch is a big thing for the Lakers um it um it certainly brightened their short-term future um the Lakers were worth $10 billion before Luca Donuch they’re worth $10 billion after Luca Donuch what you’re buying is the what you’re buying is the brand again on its face the Lakers they don’t own their own arena they don’t control a big giant piece of real estate um uh they don’t um you know have they’re they’re just you’re buying the the the blue and you know the gold you’re buy and those are all reasons why that’s right and those are all reasons why the Lakers are being sold right if the Lakers were owned by Steve Balmer for the past 15 years right not saying the oddc court results would be better or worse to your point McMahon Matt Ishb has got plenty of money the Suns are not in a great spot but they probably would own their own arena they probably would have all these other kinds of things that they don’t have in part because the Lakers were not in position to do that kind of stuff now they’re going to be in position to do whatever they want wherever they want whenever they want which is a much different reality not just for the Lakers but for the rest of the NBA because the Lakers are already sitting there as the number one brand in the sport with all these built-in advantages behind them without any of this stuff and now like the Dodgers again to go back to when these same people bought it from the McCort family that’s when things changed for the Dodgers it’s certainly very possible it could change that way for the Lakers so in the short term I don’t think it necessarily affects um any of the Lakers business they’re still not going to have cap space they’re still going to want to extend Luca Donuch they’re still going to be looking for a center they still have you know a couple of draft picks um they’re still bound by the rules of the aprons um but on a grand scale over the course of time it could change the Lakers if you are a Lakers fan uh I would say that you should be very appreciative of the bus years um because Jerry Bus turned them into this brand that’s selling and I think you should be very excited about the new horizons that um deep pocketed newer um more savvy um ownership could bring i don’t know if you agree with that or not well it’s also not new it’s there they’re not going to have new owner syndrome either like you literally just have to look across town to Chavez to see what happened with the Dodgers it’s like these guys came in and again it’s not just as simple as they bought a bunch of players like they built out as good an organization as there is in baseball and probably arguably across sports when you look at how much they’ve invested across the board and all sorts of stuff and if they do that with the Lakers like you said over the long hall the Lakers will be better off you know the Thunder we’re sitting here with the Thunder and Pacers in the NBA finals right for the Oklahoma City Thunder to win the NBA title they have to do a whole lot of things right and a whole lot of things have to break their way right the Lakers for better or worse are starting the race way out in front of teams like the Thunder and Pacers like they just are so if you remove these issues that the Lakers have had it gives you that much more of an ability to take advantage of the head start that the Lakers have where over the past 15 years or so they really haven’t and that’s allowed them to stay in the same group as a lot of these other teams because again if you go back in earlier times when the financial situations among the owners was not as big of a difference it’s not a coincidence the Lakers were always awesome like there’s a lot of reasons for that and those reasons haven’t gone away so now one of the things that’s been a potential hurdle for them is now cleared out of the way for you know it is interesting though Oklahoma City obviously uh one of the smallest is it the smallest market in the league it’s it’s one of them whatever i think it’s decant but either way it’s it’s in the running a very small market but all the things you’re talking about in terms of like what you can do with money i mean the Thunder have an extraordinarily deep staff i mean you talk about scouting you talk about analytics you talk about coaching player development you know commitment uh to their GLeague a beautiful new basketball facility you know as we’re walking around Oklahoma City the former convention center the demolition has started on that because it’s about to be this billiondoll basketball palace that by Clay Bennett the Thunder’s owner contributed 50 million the city’s building this palace for them so for being a small market franchise the Thunder have positioned themselves with the help of the city but really Sam Prey’s vision has positioned the Thunder to have an incredible amount of advantages and this is kind of a move for the Lakers to try to catch up to uh itty bitty little OKC that’s true that is 100% true i’m not saying Sam Prey is showing up in LA because I do not think that’ll be happening but again it is not a coincidence that when these guys bought the Dodgers what did they do they went and hired Andrew Freriedman for people who don’t follow the Tampa Bay Rays that was a team that was built on building to the draft having a lot of young cheap players they didn’t have a ton of payroll money they were way behind the Yankees and these other teams but they were competitive every year because they had an incredible infrastructure to bring in talent and bring in new ideas and ways to compete despite not having that financial might behind them and then you take a guy like that you give them all the financial resources and things look a lot different so again if you’re a Laker fan you want a blueprint for what this team is going to look like going forward that I think is a blueprint of what you can expect them to do again not based off of just pie in the sky thinking but based off of literally what they did across town with another iconic team that was in need of some boosting up from a financial backing standpoint and what they did after they took over so yesterday uh Oklahoma City announced their uh lease extension with the Thunder it’s been in the works for a while after they got the arena approved but I’m sure they took advantage of it to um to announce it during the finals but they actually signed it yesterday uh keeps them in Oklahoma City through 2053 I think and um they were touting that the you know you know Clay Bennett the owner is one of the greatest Oklahomaman of his generation um it’s not like anything would happen but they were touting how that the that the fee for ever for them ever to move was a billion dollars that it was you know you know all this is happening and you know and the Thunder aren’t going anywhere it’s going to be a billion dollars and I kind of smiled because it sounds like a lot of money but in all honesty if you know to move a team a billion dollars is really you know depending on where you’re moving them it’s not overcomeable in 2025 much less you know 2045 i don’t want to I don’t want to set anything off i’m just saying the the the you know OKC was like a billion dollars like no way this team’s going anywhere we know they’re not going anywhere but right a billion dollars is you know uh it’ll buy you you know 10% of the Lakers and they’ve come a long way from the days of having a facility that smelled like burning dog food um anyway all right um this could be a this can end up being one of the most important things that happens to NBA hierarchy of the decade so or not well there’s there’s there’s one other thing we should discuss really quick before we go which is um we talked about this with the Celtics sale uh the reason Adam Silver was waiting to move forward with expansion which he said at uh his game one pregame one annual press conference that it’s going to be on the agenda at next month’s board of governors meeting in Las Vegas and that he all but confirmed it’s going to be recommended to committee which is the next step in the process of having expansion come to the NBA was waiting to see that $6 billion valuation for the Lakers a number that you heard around the league for the Celtics for the Celtics I’m sorry that was a number that you heard around the league was one the league hoped to get and would help to set the groundwork for what the price would be for potential future expansion teams obviously future expansion teams are not the Los Angeles Lakers but it does not hurt that the previous record for purchasing an NBA team which was 66% higher than the prior bid was just eclipsed by a bid that was 66% higher than that so when you think about it that way if you’re looking forward to expansion in the coming years and you’re a fan I would assume most particularly in Seattle and Las Vegas I would feel pretty good about the idea that this is only going to add fuel to the fire of expansion coming to the NBA because just as a reminder let’s say those two teams go for an average of $6 billion that’s 12 billion total that number does not get split with the players that gets split with the 30 current owners that means every current owner would get a check for $400 million so when you start talking with numbers like that that is where expansion comes into play and again if you’re a Sonics fan in particular I’m sure there’s a lot of people in Seattle who are not very happy that the Oklahoma City Thunder are one win away from winning their first NBA championship since moving the team there back in 2008 but today is a day where I think if you’re a Sonics fan you got closer to getting a team in Seattle again and so if nothing else you could take heart in that all right well um more to uh more to come on this uh thank you for listening to Hoop Collective uh thank you to Bontam thank you to McMahon thank you to Jackson for scrambling here in the middle of a hellacious storm in Indianapolis uh we will talk to you soon yep thunder was rolling through Indianapolis today adios amigos

Brian Windhorst is joined by ESPN’s Tim Bontemps and Tim MacMahon to react to the Lakers’ record-setting sale from the Buss family to Mark Walter, the CEO and chairman of diversified holding company TWG Global. The guys break down the huge impact this could have on the Los Angeles franchise, the ripple effects around the league, some fascinating details of the deal you may have missed and more.

0:00 Intro
0:41 Lakers’ record-setting sale reaction
2:09 What does this mean for the team?
6:05 Why is Buss family doing this now?
8:50 Can Dodgers’ model apply to Lakers?
11:25 Breaking down the details of the deal
19:44 What is the short-term impact on the team?
25:50 Could this further impact expansion?

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