NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league found no red flags when it vetted Mark Walter before approving him as the Lakers’ controlling owner, and that he learned Walter planned to sell the team only when the buyers disclosed a handshake deal. Silver spoke Tuesday at a news conference following the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York.

Asked whether the league missed warning signs during its approval process, Silver said the NBA ran its standard review. He said the league spoke to government agencies and, given Walter’s presence in the heavily regulated insurance industry, to other leagues in which he has investments, and found no red flags. Silver characterized the matter as allegations, saying there are issues now being looked into, but that independent of Walter’s decision to sell, he was not being investigated by the NBA. Silver added that he had no prior notion Walter intended to sell until he heard from the buyers that they had a handshake with him.

The comments come against a fast-moving ownership picture. Walter agreed in June 2025 to buy the controlling stake from the Buss family at a $10 billion valuation, with Jeanie Buss staying on as governor. In August, Walter agreed to sell his majority stake to Bob Iger and Joshua Kushner at a reported price of $12.5 billion. Federal prosecutors and the SEC are examining whether Walter or his businesses hid financial ties while borrowing billions of dollars from insurers he controls, Forbes reported, citing The Wall Street Journal. Walter’s TWG Global said in an Aug. 26 statement that there had been no fraud and that it is working with the Justice Department and the SEC, and that the Dodgers are not being sold.

What This Means

The value of Silver’s answer is narrow, and he kept it narrow. He defended only the process the league ran in 2025, drawing a line between allegations and findings and declining to say the matter is closed. That distinction matters because the vetting question is only one of the league’s problems here: the governor the NBA committed in writing to keeping for at least five years is now fighting her siblings over the family’s stake, and a second sale of the franchise inside a year still needs approval. Silver vouching for the original review does nothing to resolve either, and he did not claim it would.

What’s Next

The Iger-Kushner purchase still requires league sign-off. Ownership transfers need a supermajority of at least 23 of the 30 governors, and at some point this fall the governors could vote on the Lakers sale. Complicating that timeline is Jeanie Buss’s lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, which the league will likely want resolved before it acts.

Source: Adam Silver news conference, NBA Board of Governors (via Dallas Sports Journal)