Following the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York, Commissioner Adam Silver addressed the biggest question looming over the board: the $12.5 billion sale of the Los Angeles Lakers. In an extensive media address, Silver broke his silence on one of the most tumultuous ownership sagas of this offseason. Amid questions over Jeanie Buss’ legal dispute with her siblings and whether the new sale will be approved, Silver defended the league’s vetting procedures regarding the billionaire Dodgers owner while admitting that Walter’s sudden decision to flip the Lakers caught the league completely unprepared.
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In October 2025, the Board of Governors approved Mark Walter’s purchase of majority control of the Lakers from Jeanie Buss at a $10 billion valuation. The surprise came 14 months after the original sale was announced, when Walter agreed to resell the franchise to Thrive venture capitalist Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger for a record-breaking $12.5 billion. The lightning-fast resale arrived less than a year into Walter’s tenure and amidst mounting federal financial probes involving his holding company, TWG Global.
Addressing queries regarding whether the NBA missed severe warning signs during the initial approval process, Silver maintained that the league did its due diligence at the time. Silver’s vetting of Walter occurred after federal authorities seized Walter’s phone and computer in September 2025; it remains unclear whether the NBA was specifically aware of that seizure when the Board of Governors unanimously approved the sale the following month.
“I will say at the time that we vetted Mark Walter to be the principal governor of the team; again, he was already a part owner, minority owner in the Los Angeles Lakers,” Silver told reporters. “We went through the full process we all do. We spoke to governmental agencies, we spoke to, in the case of Mark Walter, a heavily regulated insurance agency, we spoke to other leagues in which he has investments. We found no red flags.”
Silver went a step further, drawing a clear line between the federal scrutiny currently facing Walter’s corporate holdings and an internal NBA investigation. Something like the LA Clippers investigation by the law firm, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, before the DOJ opened a criminal investigation.
“Again, even to this day, as you know, these are — call them allegations. There are issues that are now being looked into. Independent of Mark Walter choosing to sell his team right now, he was not being investigated by our league. I don’t know what’s happening in other leagues right now…”
Perhaps the most shocking disclosure from Silver on this matter was that neither his office nor the board of governors knew about Walters flipping the team.
“I had no prior notion that he was intending to sell his team until I heard from the buyers that they had a handshake [agreement] with him,” the commissioner said, indicating how rapidly this sale went down.
The timeline surrounding Walter’s tenure has raised sharp questions among league observers. In June 2025, Jeanie Buss agreed to transfer majority control of the storied franchise to Walter, who already held minority stakes in the Lakers and co-owned MLB’s Los Angeles Dodgers with Lakers legend Magic Johnson.
However, reports surfaced that federal authorities seized Walter’s phone and computer in September 2025 as part of an investigation by the SEC and federal prosecutors into insurance disclosures tied to Delaware Life Insurance Company and Clear Spring Life.
Despite the federal activity, the NBA’s Board of Governors unanimously approved Walter’s takeover a month later.
A year later, Silver defended the vetting process for incoming owners.
“We take the vetting process very seriously,” Silver added. “A lot of what we do is intensive database searching. I mean, you would think in this day and age, with AI and everything else, that everything is centralized. It’s not. In many cases, you’re going state-by-state. In certain cases, people are part of industries that are regulated state-by-state, so you have to look there as well. We also talk to as many people as we can find who have knowledge about these people, and we do interviews.”
Walter’s grand vision to “Dodgerize” the Lakers’ front office abruptly halted when he agreed to the $12.5 billion handshake deal with Kushner and Iger just 10 months later.
Silver reiterated that the league conducts exhaustive personal interviews and database sweeps, though he conceded the NBA is open to evolving its background protocols.
“We’re always seeing if we can do things better, but I don’t see a trend or some widespread issue, certainly among our principal owners, that gives me cause for concern,” Silver added.
While TWG Global released statements denying any legal wrongdoing and confirming that Walter will retain ownership of the Dodgers, his brief, highly profitable exit from the NBA leaves the league navigating the fallout from a record-setting sale born of unexpected executive turmoil.