The sports executives whom Mark Walter and his Guggenheim Baseball Management trusted to turn around the Dodgers and make them World Series winners have now enlisted Farhan Zaidi and Andrew Friedman to take on advisory roles with the Lakers, people not authorized to speak publicly on the matter confirmed to The Times on Friday.
Walter, the controlling owner of the Dodgers, purchased majority ownership of the Lakers for a $10-billion evaluation and has started a transition from the Buss family ownership by having Zaidi and Friedman become more involved.
Zaidi is an advisor with Guggenheim and he was the former president of baseball operations with the San Francisco Giants and a former Dodgers general manager. He also has been consulting with the Sparks, another team that Walter owns.
Friedman is the president of baseball operations for the Dodgers and has overseen a team that has won three World Series titles in the last six years.
Both are known in the baseball world as executives who rely on analytics. The Lakers have been known as having a weak analytics department, so Zaidi and Friedman will play a role in improving that.
Friedman already has been talking with Rob Pelinka, the Lakers’ president of basketball operations, according to people with knowledge of the situation.
The Lakers began making changes in their front office when they fired Joey and Jesse Buss as well as some scouts on Thursday.
Joey Buss was an alternate governor and vice president of research and development with the Lakers while Jesse was the team’s assistant general manager and head of the scouting department.
Fresh off winning a World Series with the Dodgers, Walter, who had been a minority owner of the Lakers since he bought 27% of the franchise with Todd Boehly in 2021, promptly sat courtside for the next Lakers home game Nov. 2. He looked on when the Lakers honored the world champion Dodgers at a home game on Nov. 5.
Walter was part of the group that purchased the Dodgers for $2 billion in 2012. Since then, the team has won three World Series titles in five appearances with 13 consecutive playoff berths.
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