Transcription
That's really just the tip of the iceberg of this piece that our senior writer Baxter Holmes wrote, and he joins us now. Baxter, can you, can you paint a picture for us of just how vicious things got leading up to the sale between Jeanie Buss and the rest of the Buss siblings?
One of the things that stuck with me to answer your question dates back to 2019. This is when the Lakers, um, acquired, um, Anthony Davis in a trade. And on that day, I was told Jeanie Buss and Joey Buss, her younger siblings, spoke over the phone. And for whatever reason, I was told she brought up, uh, this alleged promise that had been made years earlier by Dr. Buss with her, uh, mother Joanne, that he would never have kids with anybody else. And for whatever reason, uh, she brought this up on this phone call, sources tell me, and said to Joey, "You should have never been born." A word about this, uh, made the rounds in the organization. And as one source told me, that marked the beginning of the end.
Yeah, that, that, that comment struck me when I wrote it, that read it. There are several times as I was reading your piece that you sort of have to pause and say, "Whoa, okay, this is a lot here." In some ways, it feels like an episode of Succession that, that is playing out in real life. But the sale, it, it centers around Mark Walter coming to Jeanie Buss and having this $10 billion offer, right? But there's some, there's some reporting notes that, that draw new attention for the stakeholders on how that went down and maybe draw some suspicion. Why is that?
I think some of the siblings, um, according to sources and even some, um, talks with Johnny and Jeanie, were wondering a little bit about whether there was a private negotiation that Jeanie had with Mark Walter. Some of the suspicion, uh, comes from what they described as bonus payments to some members of Jeanie's inner circle, uh, because of the sale. And that includes people like Linda Rambis, I was told, getting paid $24 million, Kurt Rambis getting paid $8 million. I'm told those numbers were a nod to Kobe Bryant's jersey numbers. Um, I was told that Joey and Jesse Buss wondered if she had violated a breach of the trust, okay, by negotiating privately and if, if it could, uh, there could be a judge who steps in and says this was done improperly, something like that. Ultimately, that didn't happen.
Okay, so if there would be any legal recourse there. And very interesting note that those numbers are eight and, and 24. And sort of a strange note as well. Another detail in this story is the relationship, or the, the deteriorating of the relationship between LeBron James and Jeanie Buss. What more can you tell us?
Uh, it's my understanding this has been festering for some time. If you go back to when LeBron joined the Lakers in 2018 through free agency, I was told that there was private grumbling from Jeanie about the way it was framed that LeBron was saving a floundering franchise when he joined, rather than him choosing to come there, um, because it was a great front office and it was their kind of brilliance that they brought him there. Fast forward, um, in some years, I heard about grumbling about at times his outsized ego, or Clutch Sports, his, the agency represents him, their control over the organization or seeking to exert control, feeling that he wasn't, um, culpable enough or didn't take enough accountability for the failed Russell Westbrook trade, told of multiple instances in which, um, she talked about not wanting to assign him to a contract extension or feeling that he wasn't grateful enough that the team didn't, uh, when the team drafted Bronny James in 2024, even talking about trading him at one point. This is before, um, he signed his, he got his no, uh, trade clause in 2024. So, this has been an ongoing thing.
Yeah, this is clearly, there are so many layers to all of this. And I think for me, as I was walking away from reading this, and we were chatting a little bit about it in the break, it's human nature to want to say, who's the good guy and who's the bad guy in all of this. And I just, there's one quote from Janie, one of the Buss siblings, that stuck with me when she was talking about her sister Jeanie. "Jeanie doesn't have a mean bone in her body," and so she just has some tough decisions to make here. And I do think that's important to, to recognize too, is this is incredibly complicated, these family dynamics, and it's playing out in this very public way. I, I encourage everybody to go to espn.com to read the rest of this fascinating story. Baxter, I cannot thank you enough. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it.