The Los Angeles Lakers’ ownership shakeup appears to have been tied, at least in part, to the skyrocketing cost of an NBA expansion team in Las Vegas.
During Summer League, NBA commissioner Adam Silver made it clear that a Las Vegas franchise feels like a matter of timing, not uncertainty. That backdrop mattered on Wednesday morning, when news broke that Mark Walter had sold majority ownership of the Lakers after just one year. According to Ramona Shelburne of ESPN, the new ownership group featuring Josh Kushner and Bob Iger had been moving toward the Lakers as the price of a possible Las Vegas expansion team kept climbing.
“From what I understand, Iger and Josh Kushner were in the expansion process trying to bid on the Vegas team. Those talks are going nuts right now,” Shelburne reported. “I think the number for the Vegas expansion team is climbing close to what Mark Walter paid for the Lakers back last year which was $10 billion.
“And at some point these two guys are pretty smart and they go, ‘why would we buy an expansion team for 10 and then spend another two and half to build a stadium in Vegas, without at least calling Mark Walter and seeing if we could buy the Lakers for 12 and half.”
Walter’s ownership run also came with major changes inside the organization. After the sale was completed last November, the Lakers fired most of their scouting department, including Joey and Jesse Buss.
Then, in May, the team made more cuts in the business side of the operation a few weeks after being eliminated in the playoffs by the Oklahoma City Thunder.
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