During his post Board of Governors news conference in New York, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver made it clear there weren’t any warning signs about the scrutiny surrounding Mark Walter before he became the majority owner of the Lakers.
Walter, who had been the Dodgers controlling owner since 2012 and a Lakers minority owner in 2021, agreed to purchase the majority ownership stake of the Lakers from the Buss family in June 2025 at a valuation of $10 billion.
Three months later, the FBI seized Walter’s phone and computer in September 2025 as federal prosecutors started a wide-ranging investigation into the financial dealings of Walter’s businesses.
And one month later, in October 2025, Walter was officially approved as the Lakers majority owner and purchased the franchise.
“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. We went through the full process we all do,” Silver said Tuesday. “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.”
After less than a year of leading the franchise, Walter sold the majority ownership of the Lakers to Josh Kushner and Bob Iger in August at a historic valuation of $12.5 billion.
There’s been an ongoing investigation into Walter’s business empire.
Walter’s holding company, TWG Global, released a statement in late August defending business practices and denying any wrongdoing.
The statement also made it clear the Dodgers are “not being sold and no sale process has been initiated,” and added that Walter/TWG isn’t considering selling their stakes in the Cadillac Formula 1 team or any other part of TWG Motorsports.
In addition to the Lakers, Walter and his business partner, Todd Boehly, are looking to sell their stakes in Chelsea Football Club.
Silver said he didn’t know Walter was selling the Lakers until after the deal was made with Kushner and Iger.
“Even to this day, as you know, these are — call them allegations,” Silver added. “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…I had no prior notion that he was intending to sell his team until I heard from the buyers that they had a handshake with him.”
Two of Walter’s companies — Delaware Life Insurance Company and its affiliate Clear Spring Life and Annuity — received grand jury subpoenas in February.
Federal prosecutors in New York and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) are undergoing their own separate investigations.
The scrunity surrounding Walter has raised questions whether the NBA should’ve approved for him to become the Lakers owner.
But Silver defended the league’s vetting process for owners and ownership groups.
“We take the vetting process very seriously,” Silver said. “A lot of what we do is intensive database searching. You would think in this day and age with AI and everything else, everything is centralized. It’s not. In many cases, you’re going state by state. In certain cases, people are of industries that are regulated state by state. So you have to go there as well.
“We also talk to as many people as we can find who have knowledge about these people. We do interviews. But beyond that, I will say we’re always reassessing to see if we can do more. In fairness to the parties involved, even Mark Walter, as we sit here, I know no more about him than we did when we vetted him. I read newspaper articles. In fairness to him, I don’t know where those investigations are going to come out. I don’t know where any government inquiries are going to come out. We’re always seeing if we can do things better. I don’t see a trend or some widespread issue certainly among our principal owners that gives me cause for concern.”
