Jeanie Buss effectively inherited the Los Angeles Lakers when her father, Dr. Jerry Buss, died in 2013. Jerry presided over no less than 10 NBA championships during his tenure. When he passed on, Jeanie became the franchise's governor, a position she still holds to this day.
However, with the Lakers changing hands to new ownership (again), Jeanie's status as governor is in doubt. One half of the new majority ownership duo, Bob Iger, had come out and expressed his desire to see Jeanie remain as governor moving forward, but things changed when Jeanie's siblings recently decided they wanted to sell the Buss Family Trust's share in the Lakers.
Jeanie is fighting the decision (seeing as it would remove her as governor), and there's still a decent chance that this will all end with Jeanie still in the governor's chair.
Jeanie's legacy so far as governor has been mixed. Her tenure has featured a title (2020), but there's also been plenty of mediocrity, dysfunction, and public Buss family drama that isn't healthy for the organization.
Here are three decisions/situations that stand out as particularly bad on Jeanie's Lakers résumé.
3 Biggest mistakes of the Jeanie Buss era in Los Angeles
1. Not doing enough to prevent an immediate post-Jerry decline
The few years following Dr. Buss' passing were disastrous for the Lakers, suggesting that Jeanie didn't quite have a handle on her newfound responsibilities. What the Lakers needed was a swift reset from a personnel and front office standpoint, but they held onto an aging (and expensive) Kobe Bryant and kept Mitch Kupchak in the role of GM.
What followed were four straight losing campaigns (including a heinous 17-65 season in 2015-16), and a six-year playoff drought from 2013 to 2019 -- unheard of for a franchise as powerful and renowned as the Lakers.
It took Jeanie years to understand that she needed to fire Kupchak (as well as Jim Buss from his role as president of basketball ops). She did so in 2017, but so much damage had already been done in the form of bad draft picks and shortsighted contracts. The Lakers suffered a huge drop-off in attraction as a destination for stars. Basically, Jeanie had let the brand start crumbling in her first few years as governor. She didn't act fast enough or boldly enough to prevent this.
2. Thinking that the Magic Johnson-Rob Pelinka experiment would work
Jeanie's decision to pair Magic and Pelinka together as a PBO-GM pairing wasn't a good one. It was a very Hollywood move that looked great on paper, and, notably, this duo did land LeBron James and Anthony Davis. But Johnson and Pelinka had a falling out shortly thereafter that wasn't a great look for the franchise.
Magic resigned abruptly and accused Pelinka of undermining him. It was messy and chaotic. Pelinka stayed on board and made a ton of questionable moves in the years to come (Russell Westbrook, anyone?).
Pelinka has been okay more recently and pulled off the stunning Luka Doncic trade in 2025. Jeanie clearly should have just paired Pelinka with a more suitable partner from the get-go ... at least someone he could get along with. Doing so would have saved years of bad PR headaches and made Pelinka's job easier between the 2020 title and now.
3. Constantly airing out the family laundry for fans and players to witness
This one isn't entirely on Jeanie, as her siblings have been a big reason why so many disagreements and power struggles have festered through the years. For instance, Jim and others tried to remove Jeanie from the board of directors in 2017. This led to Jeanie taking things to court, getting a restraining order, and keeping control of her role with the Lakers. But not before everything got public and ugly.
The latest chapter of the saga, mentioned above, has the "Buss 5" siblings trying to sell their stake in the franchise and thereby dragging Jeanie into the decision.
Family drama is unavoidable to an extent, but couldn't Jeanie have done a more effective job of keeping some of this stuff in-house through the years? It almost feels like she likes the attention and feeds off of it in a place like LA. That's merely a conjecture, but at any rate, none of this stuff helps the basketball team. Nor does it paint the Lakers as a stable, successful franchise that high-quality people want to join.
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