Los Angeles Lakers
Buss served four years as president of the Great Western Forum, then the home arena of the Lakers. Throughout her stint with the Forum, her role with the Lakers increased, and she served as the Alternate Governor on the NBA Board of Governors since 1995. In 1999, she was named executive vice president of business operations for the Lakers. Her brother Jim was promoted to vice president of player personnel in 2005. Their father's plan was to have Jeanie handle the business decisions of the team, while Jim handled the basketball side of the Lakers.
Sporting News in 2005 named Buss as one of the Top 20 Most Influential Women in Sports. In 2011, Forbes called Buss "one of few powerful women in sports management", and ESPN said she is "one of the most powerful women in the NBA".
After her father died in 2013, his 66% controlling ownership of the Lakers passed via a trust to his six children, including his two sons with his girlfriend Karen Demel—Joey and Jesse Buss. Each of Jerry's children received an equal vote. His succession plan had Jeanie assume his previous title as the Lakers' governor as well as its team representative at NBA Board of Governors meetings. She became president of the Lakers, leading the team's business operations, while her brother Jim continued as executive VP of basketball operations. She had ultimate operational authority and could overrule Jim's decisions. However, she commented in 2013 that "I would be more comfortable if I understood what the decision process [on the Lakers' basketball side] was, and I'm not always involved in it."
Jeanie and Jim had already been clashing for some time, as Jeanie expected the team to rehire Phil Jackson as head coach in 2012, only for Jim to hire Mike D'Antoni. Jeanie publicly criticized Jim's decision in her book Laker Girl, upsetting Jim. During the 2013–14 NBA season, Jim pledged that if the Lakers were not contending for a conference title or the NBA championship in three or four years, he would resign. Shortly before his timeline ran out, he signed two veterans to large, win-now contracts. NBC Sports' Dan Feldman opined that the deals "place[d] [Buss'] self-preservation over the Lakers' best long-term interests."
In February 2017, Buss fired her brother Jim and general manager Mitch Kupchak. ESPN reported that in addition to the team's multi-year decline in performance, she was upset that Jim did not consult her before making key trades, which she had previously instructed him to do. To replace him and Kupchak, she hired Laker legend and former minority owner Magic Johnson as President of Basketball Operations and sports agent Rob Pelinka as general manager. She later said that she did not go through a public interview process to hire a GM because she did not want to tip off her brother, who might have (and did) respond by attempting to seize control of the team.
In response, her brother Johnny (who supported Jim) attempted to remove Buss from the team's board of directors; according to one interpretation of the Lakers' organizational bylaws, this would force her to step down as controlling owner. She filed a lawsuit to confirm her control over the team, in which she argued that the family trusts' governing documents required her to be the controlling owner and a team director. She said that she had given Jim "ample time to prove himself." The dispute was resolved in Buss's favor when her siblings gave her lifetime operational control over the team.
In 2025, the Buss family sold its majority stake in the Lakers to a group headed by Mark Walter at a team valuation of $10 billion. The Busses retained a 17.8% share of the team, with Jeanie announced as the team's governor for at least the next five years. A minority owner is allowed to be governor if they own at least 15% of their team.
