If you're Luka Dončić, the business of basketball is quite a thing.
Not only was he traded from the Dallas Mavericks, the team that drafted him, to the bright lights of the Los Angeles Lakers, seemingly without any advanced notice; he will, this season, be playing for his fifth different ownership group in the past three years.
Mark Walter, who officially purchased a majority stake in the Lakers from the Buss family in October 2025, agreed last week — amid an ongoing federal investigation into alleged fraud in his lending practices — to sell control of the team to Bob Iger and Josh Kushner.
Neither Iger nor Kushner has ever run a professional sports franchise.
That may not seem like such a big deal. Dončić entered the NBA as the No. 3 overall pick (should have been No. 1), made the All-NBA First Team in his second season and earned a maximum designated rookie contract extension from the Mavericks. He now gets to play for the Lakers, the league's most fabled franchise, on a three-year, $160 million extension.
Life is good.
Except, for the most part, continuity wins in the NBA. Continuity in the ownership suite, across the front office and on the roster. Look across the league, and you will find that most successful teams have some level of continuity throughout their organizations. Rare is the owner, GM or even a player who instantaneously alters the course of a title.
Now, Dončić may be one of those players. His shocking arrival to L.A. — a deal made under the cover of night, reportedly without canvassing the league — reopened a title window that had closed as LeBron James and Anthony Davis aged out of their primes.
But in this NBA a player cannot win on his own. Your team cannot waste a dollar under the new collective bargaining agreement's second apron, which acts as a salary cap. It has to be deep and balanced, and in order to be both, it must be a well-run organization.
Look at the Oklahoma City Thunder or San Antonio Spurs or, as wild as it is to say, even the New York Knicks (at least since Leon Rose assumed the team's presidency in 2020). Consider the rival Boston Celtics, who under new owner Bill Chisholm, in coordination with the second apron, have dismantled a championship team that took years to build.
You really get one chance to build around a superstar. Ask Giannis Antetokounmpo, who saw how difficult it was to reconstruct a contender around him on the Milwaukee Bucks, and who left for greener pastures on the Miami Heat, who will have one shot — a difficult needle to thread — to build around Antetokounmpo, before he, too, ages out of his prime.
And the cycle begins anew. The Heat will find their next hope. Someone else will be the face of the franchise. The same will soon be true of these Lakers. It's easier to meet those waves with stability at the helm — with team owner Micky Arison, team president Pat Riley and head coach Erik Spoesltra, all of whom have been around the Heat for decades.
Granted, Rob Pelinka has been GM of the Lakers since 2017, winning a championship by 2020, and he acquired Dončić out of thin air in 2025, but it has otherwise been a wild ride.
We can debate how much credit Pelinka warrants for landing James or Davis or Dončić, all of whom seemed destined for L.A., regardless of who was in charge, but Pelinka has had more failed free-agent signings than not and rid the cupboard of tradable draft picks.
Despite the ownership change, Pelinka remained in charge this summer, when the Lakers had salary cap space. He spent it, signing Austin Reaves ($185 million), Walker Kessler ($130 million), Quentin Grimes ($60 million) and Sandro Mamukelashvili ($52 million) to four-year deals. This was their chance to build around Doncic, and that was their swing.
It is a team projected by oddsmakers to record fewer than last season's 53 victories. That team had James and lost in the second round of the playoffs, as Dončić and Reaves were injured. But no one believed in it as a serious title contender. Just as no one outside L.A. believes in this version. They may get there, of course, with some continuity between Dončic and Reaves, some development from Kessler, more defense around them, and a bit more seasoning for third-year head coach JJ Redick, the 42-year-old former player.
But it will take time.
In the meantime, the Buss family is back in the news. All but one sibling, Jeanie Buss, agreed to also sell their remaining minority stake in the team to Iger and Kushner — at a $12.5 billion valuation — and she is reportedly contesting that part of the sale in court.
This would have little to do with basketball if Buss had not hand-picked Pelinka as GM. She remained on as governor under Walter, and he remained on as GM, mostly because they are friends. He was Kobe Bryant's agent, and when Buss needed someone to head up her basketball operations, she chose him — without a nationwide search for the most accomplished candidates — and Magic Johnson, the most famous face of the franchise.
It did not go well. Johnson quit, throwing Pelinka, among others, under the bus. They have since made up, at least publicly, where Johnson has congratulated Pelinka on the 2020 championship and the 2025 acquisition of Dončić. Then again, he congratulated the Lakers on their sale to Walter, his business partner, and that didn't go so well, either.
You see, the Lakers have long been a drama worthy of portrayal in Hollywood, which they have been of late, often, both in documentary and scriptedform. It could take some time for them to get serious, and it will almost certainly take even more if they pivot off Pelinka.
The question is whether the Lakers have that time. Dončić's new deal kicks in this season, when he will make $49.5 million. He is due $53.5 million for the 2027-28 season, and he holds a $57.4 million player option for the 2028-29 campaign. Which means he could be a free agent in 2028. Which means, if he is at all unsatisfied with the direction of the team, he could start making noise about wanting out of L.A. as soon as next summer, or earlier.
If he really doesn't like where this roster is headed — and the Lakers have little flexibility to make significant changes to the rotation — what's stopping him, for once, after all this turmoil, from exercising his power and leaving for whichever well-run organization he so chooses.
The business of basketball is quite a thing.