On Wednesday, May 27, 2026, the Los Angeles Lakers informed more than a dozen business-side employees they were being laid off as part of a reorganization under new franchise leadership. ESPN, which broke the story, reported that the cuts spanned marketing, team communications, team content, and corporate partnerships. The team did not publish a specific number, and the 20-job figure used on this page is a working estimate that brackets the "more than a dozen" language from ESPN.
The basketball operations side was not affected. On the same day the layoffs were announced, the Lakers continued to expand basketball staff, including the recent hire of Tony Bennett, a two-time Naismith Coach of the Year and NCAA champion at Virginia, as a draft consultant and advisor under president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka.
The cuts are the first major workforce action under new majority owner Mark Walter, who also controls the Los Angeles Dodgers. The NBA Board of Governors approved Walter's purchase at a $10 billion valuation in October 2025, ending nearly five decades of Buss family ownership that began with Dr. Jerry Buss in 1979. Walter has spent the months since closing rebuilding the senior business team, hiring Lon Rosen as president of business operations (replacing longtime president Tim Harris), Michael Spetner as chief strategy and growth officer, and Ryan Kantor as vice president of global partnerships.
Hours before the business-side layoffs were reported, the Lakers parted ways with Joey Buss and Jesse Buss, two of the late Jerry Buss's sons, who had been working in front-office scouting roles for two decades. The brothers retain minority ownership stakes but are out of the franchise's day-to-day operations. In a joint statement reported by Sports Illustrated, they said: "We are extremely honored to have been part of this organization for the last 20 seasons. We wish things could be different with the way our time ended."
The Lakers join the Portland Trail Blazers as the second NBA franchise in eight days to execute business-side cuts under a new owner. On May 19, 2026, Tom Dundon, the Trail Blazers' new majority owner, laid off roughly 70 business operations employees and publicly said the team had been spending $100 million more on business ops annually than his NHL Carolina Hurricanes. Both situations follow the same pattern: ownership changes hands, basketball operations stay intact, and the business side is restructured to match the new owner's cost framework.
The Lakers' cuts are smaller in absolute number than the Trail Blazers' but signal the same shift: NBA franchises are increasingly being treated as portfolio assets where new ownership rapidly trims business-side headcount against industry benchmarks. Combined with earlier 2026 sports and entertainment layoffs at the PGA Tour (80 cuts in April), Penn Entertainment (75 cuts in May), and Ticketmaster (350 cuts in early May), the year is on track to be one of the larger contractions on the sports and entertainment business-operations side in recent memory.