It’s rare to see someone so violently thrown into a locker within 24 hours of reporting a supposed scoop. But it couldn’t have happened to a better person than Bill Simmons.
On his podcast early Friday morning, Simmons reported that the “Lakers guy,” referring to new owner Josh Kushner, was struggling to find the money to complete the purchase of the team from Mark Walter.
Early on Friday, reports from Ben Horney of Front Office Sports and Dan Woike of The Athletic refuted that notion. And the proverbial
nail in the coffin came from Ramona Shelburne of ESPN on Friday evening.
According to Shelburne, Kushner and Mark Walter met on Friday to finalize the terms of the sale.
Los Angeles Lakers owner Mark Walter and Thrive Capital founder Josh Kushner have agreed on all outstanding terms of the sale of the team at a $12.5 billion valuation, sources close to the negotiations told ESPN.
The two men met in person Thursday at Walter’s home in Florida to finalize the transaction and are expected to sign the formal agreement soon, those sources said.
That reporting was backed up by multiple others as well, including Brad Turner of the LA Times and Benjamin Royer of the OC Register.
By all accounts, then, Kushner has the money needed to complete the deal or at least assured him he had the necessary funds. Given that the only report we have that Kushner doesn’t have the money comes from a lifelong Celtics fan, while multiple sourced reporters refute that claim, it’s pretty easy to pick which side to believe.
The process will now move on to the league reviewing the purchase and everything becoming official, so we’ll know soon enough. It’s unclear how long that process will take, but given the league did not find out about the federal investigation going on with Walter during their investigation last year, it’s hard to imagine they’ll spend that long looking into things.
But it sure seems like we’ll have more ammo to laugh at Simmons and more evidence that he genuinely just can’t objectively discuss the Lakers.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
