If we’re going to kill him over this year, it’s also prudent to acknowledge the fact that the Seattle Mariners have NEVER advanced as far as they did last year in the playoffs… Game 7 of the ALCS. What a ride. that is all I have to say about that. Go M’s
I'm sorry we never got a chance to meet, but getting this note from Dolly really had a an impact on me. She definitely didn't have to take the time to do it. Even for a kid who mostly listened to rap music, she was an icon. A superstar in every sense. Rest easy Dolly. And thank you for the kind words.
I’ve been hearing a lot of reports that people are having trouble finding the right headcover for their new @goodgood_golf drivers. The golf world stepped up.
End of the greatest era in sports history. Dr. Buss and his daughter changed the sports world. Sad day in LaLa land for sure. Won’t ever be the same again.
Jerry Buss spent his life making sure his daughter would run the Lakers.
He wrote it into his trust. She went to court to enforce it and won.
Today her own family voted to sell, and she lost the team anyway.
Here's the whole thing, because it's one of the wildest family stories in sports.
In 1979, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers, the Kings and the Forum in a package deal. He turned the Lakers into Showtime and the most glamorous franchise in American sports.
He died in February 2013.
His will split ownership of the team equally among his six children. Jeanie, Jim, Johnny, Janie, Joey and Jesse.
But he also wrote something specific into the trust. Jeanie was to be the controlling owner.
And here's a detail almost nobody knows.
ONE WEEK after Jerry Buss died, the six siblings met. And Johnny and Jim proposed selling the team.
Under the trust, a sale needed four of six votes. It didn't get there. Jeanie was the reluctant one.
That was 2013. Remember that number, four of six.
Fast forward to February 2017. The Lakers are terrible. Jeanie fires longtime GM Mitch Kupchak, strips her brother Jim of his role running basketball operations, and hires Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka.
Her brothers did not take it well.
On February 24, Johnny called a meeting of the trust to elect a new Lakers board of directors. He proposed four names for the three family seats.
Neither Jeanie nor her brother Joey was on the list.
Under team bylaws, the controlling owner has to sit on the board. Remove her from the board and you remove her from control of the Lakers.
So Jeanie Buss took her brothers to court.
She filed a lawsuit and a temporary restraining order in Los Angeles Superior Court, arguing they had breached their duty as co-trustees to keep her as controlling owner, exactly as their father had written it.
Her attorney's line at the time: "This is no doubt the beginning and not the end of the game-playing. They don't have a legal leg to stand on."
The brothers folded that same day. They canceled the meeting and withdrew the request.
Jim and Johnny resigned as trustees. Janie and Joey replaced them, and they re-elected Jeanie as controlling owner for life.
Johnny's summary of what they'd been trying to figure out: "Well, is Jeanie the absolute dictator of the Lakers?"
Jeanie's summary: "Clearly, the intention that my father had in the trust is that I would be named controlling owner, because he wrote the trust exactly the way the judge interpreted it. Those were his wishes."
She won completely. Then she went and won bigger.
In 2020 the Lakers won the championship, and Jeanie Buss became the first woman ever to be the controlling owner of an NBA title team.
Last year the family sold the controlling stake to Mark Walter at a $10 billion valuation, with Jeanie staying on as governor through 2030.
Then this month Walter flipped the team to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger at $12.5 billion. Iger said publicly last week that the new group intended to honor the arrangement keeping Jeanie in place.
And then today happened.
The Buss family trust exercised a tag-along provision and sold its remaining 17.8 percent stake.
The vote required four of six siblings.
It got there.
NBA rules require a governor to hold at least 15 percent ownership. With that stake gone, Jeanie Buss cannot remain governor of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The family's statement: "We love the Lakers, Laker fans and will continue to support Los Angeles; but it is time to use this opportunity to move on and exit gracefully while we still can."
Forty seven years of Buss ownership, done.
Nobody has reported how each sibling voted, and the family is calling it a joint decision. But some around the league see it differently, and it's hard to ignore the symmetry.
The same threshold that failed in 2013, one week after their father died, is the one that finally cleared today.
And here's the part that gets me.
Jerry Buss gave all six of his children an equal share because he loved all six of them.
He also wrote the trust to guarantee his daughter would run the team.
Those two things worked against each other for thirteen years. Jeanie won every single fight along the way, in court and on the floor.
Then the equal shares her father gave everyone else finally added up to four.
FIFA President Gianni Infantino:
“I have seen the public comments regarding the decision of the independent FIFA Disciplinary Committee related to the suspension of Folarin Balogun, and I would like to reiterate a fundamental principle of FIFA’s governance.
“FIFA’s judicial bodies are independent. They operate autonomously, apply the FIFA Disciplinary Code, and decide cases based on the applicable regulations and the specific facts before them. Their independence is essential to the credibility and integrity of football, and this must always be respected.
“Yes, I regularly discuss matters related to the FIFA World Cup with the President of the United States, and on this matter, I did receive a call from President Donald Trump, just as I receive calls from heads of state, government officials, football stakeholders and business executives from around the world on many different issues. During our conversation, I explained that there was an ongoing legal process involving FIFA’s independent judicial bodies and that the case would be decided in due course by the competent bodies. That is how FIFA’s system works, and it is a principle that I will always uphold.
“I read the decisions of the FIFA Disciplinary Committee when they are issued. Sometimes I am surprised by them. Sometimes I agree with them, and sometimes I disagree.
“What I always do, however, is respect those decisions and the autonomy of the bodies that make them. Whether we personally like a decision or not is irrelevant. Respect for independent institutions and the rule of law is what protects the integrity of our competitions and the credibility of FIFA at all times.”
"This was not a love affair. It was transactional. It never felt like Kobe. It never felt like Worthy. It never felt like Michael Cooper... LeBron aged out of the Lakers' plans."
@colincowherd weighs in on a report about LeBron's split with the Lakers
The replay of this final round will have more people watching than any @livgolf_league event ever. One of the greatest comeback stories ever. Congrats AK!