A look into Jeanie Buss’s life reveals the ingredients that could make a showrunner salivate.
She is an heir to the longtime owner of the Los Angeles Lakers, the N.B.A. franchise that has been home to stars like Magic Johnson, Kobe Bryant and currently LeBron James. She is a top female executive in a sports industry largely dominated by men. And her family is tangled in high-profile dysfunction.
A television show capturing those tense dynamics might resemble the sports version of “Game of Thrones” or “House of Cards.” Instead, Buss chose “The Office.”
“Running Point,” a comedy series executive produced by Buss that is loosely inspired by her life, has returned to Netflix for its second season. Created by Mindy Kaling, Ike Barinholtz, Elaine Ko and David Stassen, the show follows Isla Gordon (Kate Hudson), the president of the fictional Los Angeles Waves pro basketball team, who this season navigates a power struggle with an older brother for control of the franchise. It arrives at a real-life inflection point for Buss and the Lakers.
The Buss family has owned the Lakers since Jeanie’s father, Jerry, bought them in 1979. (Jerry Buss died in 2013.) The family in October sold a majority stake of the team to Mark Walter, the owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers baseball team, for a $10-billion valuation. Jeanie Buss, who had been the controlling owner of the Lakers since 2017, retained a leadership position after the sale, and months later the Lakers fired her brothers Joey and Jesse.
The dismissals came nearly a decade after Buss fired another brother, Jim, sparking years of infighting among the siblings. In a recent phone interview, Buss chuckled when asked about the timing for the second season of “Running Point,” saying it was a coincidence.
“Running the Lakers on a day-to-day basis isn’t being done to create inspiration for a TV show,” she said. “These things happen on their own accord.”
Buss, who is married to the comedian Jay Mohr, approached Kaling, an executive producer for “The Office” and “The Mindy Project, ” about a humorous adaptation of her life. Her family’s history is well-documented in the news media and was the subject of the HBO drama series “Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty.” The Lakers did not participate in that show, and Buss unsuccessfully attempted to prevent it. She praised the portrayal of her father by John C. Reilly but said the series contained inaccuracies.
“Real people weren’t treated as they actually were,” Buss said.
Comedy helps Buss deal with stress in the workplace, she said, adding that the lighthearted rendition of her life in “Running Point” could also offer an escape for its audience.
“I think people, especially nowadays, need a way to laugh at themselves,” Buss said. “Having a comedic take on what goes on is something that feels natural to me.”
“Running Point” premiered in February 2025 and had a strong debut. Netflix said the series drew 33 million views in its first five weeks and quickly renewed it for a second season.
The show is part of a robust lineup of streaming sports comedies that also includes “Ted Lasso” and “Stick” on Apple TV and “Chad Powers” and “Shoresy” on Hulu. “Sports and comedy seem to have a lot in common,” said Tracey Pakosta, who oversees comedy series for Netflix. “They sort of hit people at their core.”
“Sports has a big audience,” she added. “But also underneath it all, it’s always about the players and the people behind the scenes.”
Kaling said the second season of “Running Point” was already in production when news of the Lakers sale was announced, so the creators did not use it as direct inspiration. She is unsure if or how it will be included in the future. (The show has not yet been renewed for another season.)
“We always just write ourselves into a corner with a ton of cliffhangers and unanswered questions, but the truth is we also don’t know the answer when we do them,” Kaling said.
The creators made periodic trips to the Lakers’ practice facility in El Segundo, Calif., to meet with Buss and Linda Rambis, a top Lakers official and Buss’s close friend who is also an executive producer of the series. (She is married to the former Laker Kurt Rambis.) The producers asked about the intricacies of leading a team — What is it like to trade a player? Who is your first work call in the morning? — and based the show’s set partly on the facility’s physical layout.
After Buss told the creators about a rumor that she had dated a player, it became a subplot in the first season, with a Wave player kissing Hudson’s Isla at dinner. Barinholtz said Buss is otherwise a hands-off executive producer and has never asked the writers to remove anything from a script.
“To have a creative partner like that is very special, and unfortunately it’s rare,” Barinholtz said. “A lot of times people are like, ‘Even though you’re not playing me, I’m taking myself very seriously and I’m going to have a ton of thoughts and notes.’ To have someone who is just like, ‘Oh, this was so funny, I love it,’ it really makes our lives a lot easier.”
Kaling said there was no outreach to Buss’s siblings to hear their perspectives. While there are real-world parallels in the show, like Isla’s overarching conflict with her brothers, Kaling warned against reading too much into them.
“We’re not really trying to do things that are ripped from the headlines,” she said. “I don’t think any of us have any interest in this being an autobiographical show.”
Buss said she and her five siblings sold much of their stake to Walter because they were at “different places in our lives.” The Dodgers are back-to-back World Series champions, and Walter has moved at least two Dodgers executives into the Lakers C-suite.
The Lakers are one of the most recognizable and marketable teams in professional sports, and they have the second-most N.B.A. championships in league history (17, including 11 since Jerry Buss bought them; the Boston Celtics have 18). But they have not been to the finals since winning in 2020.
Buss wore the bejeweled 2020 championship ring to the Hollywood red carpet premiere for the new season earlier this month. As the Lakers enter the playoffs and continue the corporate shuffling, she said she believed “Running Point” could reach new fans who didn’t particularly care about N.B.A. championships, sports-talk shows or business news.
“It’s not the Jeanie Buss story; it’s not the Laker story,” she said. “I think it’s good to broaden our circle of what people enjoy about the game of basketball and the personalities behind it.”
Emmanuel Morgan reports on sports, pop culture and entertainment.
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