Back when the National Basketball Association was little more than a startup, two Jewish businessmen named Benjamin Berger and Morris Chalfen bought the worst team in the sport, the Detroit Gems, for $15,000. They relocated the franchise to Minneapolis and gave it a name that nodded to state geography.<\/p>\n
Eighty years later, the Lakers are a global brand, have won 17 championships and play in Los Angeles \u2014 and for the first time since Berger and Chalfen sold, a Jewish duo will take the reins. Joshua Kushner and Bob Iger are buying a majority stake in the team, ESPN reported<\/a> Wednesday. They\u2019ll be paying a tad more than Berger did in the 1940s \u2014the Lakers were valued at $12.5 billion in the sale.<\/p>\n It\u2019s been a busy summer for Kushner, a real estate scion married to supermodel Karlie Kloss; his brother Jared is a former Trump administration fixture. A company backed by his VC firm, Thrive Capital, tried to buy a stake in the World Cup last month, causing an international backlash that may yet lead to the resignation<\/a> of FIFA president Gianni Infantino. (That subsidiary, Thrive Eternal, also owns a stake in the San Francisco Giants.)<\/p>\n Kushner and Iger were reportedly angling to buy an expansion NBA franchise in Las Vegas before pivoting to the Lakers.<\/p>\n \u201cAs lifelong NBA fans, we are deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers, one of the most iconic sports franchises in the world,\u201d Kushner and Iger said in a statement to ESPN.<\/p>\n Kushner is now tasked with restoring the Lakers to \u201cShowtime\u201d glory \u2014 perhaps with Kloss courtside in the seat once held by an earlier model-turned-owner, Jeanie Buss.<\/p>\n He comes from a family well-acquainted with the tabloids. His brother, Jared, is married to Ivanka Trump and serves as a White House advisor. Their father, Charles Kushner, made billions in real estate development before he was sent to prison for illegal campaign contributions, tax evasion and witness tampering. (Trump later pardoned him, and today Kushner serves as the U.S. ambassador to France.)<\/p>\n The sale comes 14 months after Buss sold the Lakers to Mark Walter, the head of a private equity firm and a co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Walter, who bought the team at a $10 billion valuation, is currently facing federal and SEC investigations<\/a> into insurance companies tied to his broader business operations.<\/p>\n It was not publicly known that the Lakers were for sale, and ESPN\u2019s Ramona Shelburne reported<\/a> Wednesday that Kushner and Iger \u2014 who had previously been bidding for an expansion NBA team in Las Vegas \u2014 approached Walter with an offer he couldn\u2019t refuse.<\/p>\n The sale would make the Lakers the 14th NBA team out of 30 with Jewish principal owners. The league was founded by Jewish businessmen in the 1940s.<\/p>\n The newcomers will inherit a roster in transition following the departure of LeBron James, who at 41 is a few months older than Kushner, the youngest majority owner in the NBA.<\/p>\n Behind James and Luka Don\u010di\u0107, the Lakers finished with the fourth-best record in the Western Conference last season and were eliminated in the second round of the playoffs. James signed with the Philadelphia 76ers this offseason in free agency. <\/p>\n This story was originally published in the Forward<\/a>. Click here<\/a> to get the Forward\u2019s free email newsletters delivered to your inbox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back when the National Basketball Association was little more than a startup, two Jewish businessmen named Benjamin Berger…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":862197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-862196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/862197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}