As the dust settles in the aftermath of the firing of Joey and Jesse Buss, certainly a surprising move in the moment, it’s starting to become increasingly clear how things played out and, more specifically,
who may have made the final decision.
Ultimately, we’ll likely never get outright reporting as to who made the final call to fire Joey and Jesse, but a lot of fingers are pointed in the direction of Jeanie.
The obvious first sign came from Jesse, who, in an article by Dan Woike and Sam Amick of The Athletic, pretty simply said, “She fired everyone” in reference to Jeanie and her siblings who worked in the front office throughout the years.
In another quote, given to Shams Charania and Dave McMenamin of ESPN, he also implied an awful lot about how things stood within his family (emphasis added).
“We are extremely honored to have been part of this organization for the last 20 seasons. Thank you to Laker Nation for embracing our family every step of the way. We wish things could be different with the way our time ended with the team. At times like this, we wish we could ask our Dad what he would think about it all.“
It’s that quote that Brian Windhorst discussed on his podcast, “Brian Windhorst & The Hoop Collective,” leading to more fingers aimed at Jeanie (emphasis added).
“That last sentence, Pelton, is a broadside at their sister, in my view, because, quite frankly, the only person that can fire a Buss is a Buss. While I’m sure the owner, Mark Walter…gave his blessing for this, the governor is still Jeanie and they still own a percentage of the team and you can’t fire an owner unless you’re Jeanie. We’ll find out where Walter was, we’ll find out where Pelinka was, but this was Buss on Buss crime.”
I wouldn’t say this was reporting, but even if it’s speculation, it’s at least semi-informed speculation. If nothing else, it’s connecting the dots in a similar manner to what we’re doing.
Windhorst also explained that, between the six Buss siblings, there was a long-standing vote of 3-3 on whether to sell the team. The three oldest siblings were in favor while Joey, Jesse and Jeanie were the holdouts. Eventually, Jeanie switched sides, making it a 4-2 vote in favor of selling.
Lastly, there’s Pete Zayas’ (better known as LakerFilmRoom) comments on the Lakers to take into account as well. On his “Laker Film Room” podcast, there wasn’t reporting or even really speculation, but there was some insight into his perspective of how the front office operated during his time working for the Lakers in recent years.
“One of my biggest impressions from that experience was how factional the Lakers are. That’s something that I strongly believe you can not thrive with multiple interal parties working against each other and one of those factions was the Jesse and Joey faction. There was not a lot of love loss between them and the Pelinka faction or the Jeanie faction, of which Pelinka is probably part of the Jeanie faction, too.”
Perhaps Jeanie felt that, if she were to fire Joey and Jesse while the family was still majority owners, it could lead to another nasty court battle between the siblings. Or maybe it was simply time to weed out the factions within the front office. The fact that the entire scouting department, who worked under Jesse and like would have been part of that faction, was let go lends some credence to that, too.
Whatever the rationale, the end result pretty clearly appears to be that Jeanie was the one who made the final call to fire the brothers. Hopefully, that’s the end of the Buss family drama with this franchise.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on BlueSky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
