What will the Lakers look like with top Dodgers execs helping lead the way? That's the big question in L.A.

Andrew Friedman’s job was fairly straightforward.

Mark Walter, the billionaire chief executive of the financial and investment advisory firm Guggenheim Partners, had spent a record-setting sum to purchase one of America’s iconic sports franchises, a crown jewel in a prime market with a rich history: the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Two years into his tenure, the team was good. Really good. But Walter wanted more. He believed he had the blueprint, too. If he could add on a state-of-the-art, data-driven front office, one where no expense would be spared and no edge would go unexplored, he’d have the makings of a juggernaut, one that would dominate on the field and become a cash cow in the process. 

To execute that plan, he pried Friedman, widely regarded as one of the best minds in Major League Baseball, away from the Tampa Bay (then-Devil) Rays in October 2014 and named him president of baseball operations. A few weeks later Friedman pried Farhan Zaidi away from Billy Beane’s Oakland Athletics and named him Dodgers GM. Together, they turned the Dodgers into an organization widely regarded as one of the most sophisticated and successful in all of sports. They’ve won three titles over the past six years. 

“When Andrew went to the Dodgers, their processes and systems were lagging behind the rest of baseball,” a longtime MLB executive told Yahoo Sports. “Andrew was not only able to catch them up — he pushed them to the forefront of things like player evaluation and performance science.”

A little more than a decade later, Walter appears to be attempting to duplicate that blueprint in a different sport. And once again he’s empowered Friedman and Zaidi to spearhead that transformation.

In October, Walter became the majority owner of the Los Angeles Lakers. That means that this offseason will be the first in nearly 50 years in which the Buss family does not hold majority control.

For years, the Lakers have operated with one of the NBA’s thinnest front offices. A small player performance and medical group. A tiny analytics team. No assistant GMs. Even JJ Redick, after being hired as head coach in June 2024, told a friend he was surprised by how lean the team was behind the scenes. 

But what happens when one of the NBA’s most storied teams, long run like a tight-fisted mom-and-pop shop, is taken over by a free-spending ownership group with a track record of building one of sports’ most sophisticated operations? And what happens when that new owner empowers a pair of venerated baseball executives to help lead the way? 

This — not LeBron James’ future or Austin Reaves’ free agency — will be the defining question of the Lakers' offseason. We don’t yet know how far Walter wants to go. What is clear, though — based on Lakers president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka’s recent comments as well as interviews with nearly a dozen people connected to Friedman, the Lakers and the NBA — is that, despite Jeanie Buss remaining the team’s governor, a new era of Lakers basketball has begun.

“It’s a full rebuild and retool,” Pelinka told reporters after the Lakers were swept by the Oklahoma City Thunder in the second round, while discussing the organization’s collaboration with Friedman and the Dodgers. “It’s adding to the great things that are already here, which have led to success, but elevating it and bringing it to the next level.”

Walter, who bought a minority stake in the Lakers in 2021, might have only become the team’s majority owner in October. But he began evaluating the organization long before then.

“He and his Dodgers people called everyone before they bought the team,” an agent at a major sports firm told Yahoo Sports. Many of the calls were made by Zaidi, who was the general manager of the San Francisco Giants from from 2018-24 before returning in 2025 as a special adviser to both the Dodgers and Walter.

It helped that both Friedman and Zaidi (who both declined interviews through a Dodgers spokesperson) were familiar with the NBA ecosystem. A Houston native, Friedman had become friends with Daryl Morey during his tenure with the Rockets. The two often got breakfast together and, in 2011, Morey allowed Friedman to sit in on the Rockets’ draft. Zaidi, meanwhile, is a diehard Chicago Bulls fan who used to spend hours reading and posting on fan message boards. 

“I know basketball is his real, true love,” David Forst, Zaidi’s onetime boss at the Oakland Athletics, told the Los Angeles Times in 2017. 

That said, neither Friedman nor Zaidi seems interested in making a cross-sport leap. Their interactions over the past few months with NBA player agents, including those representing Lakers’ stars, have been minimal, according to league sources. “This isn’t like when one of these owners comes in and acts like they know everything,” said an agent who’s spoken frequently with Zaidi about the Lakers. “His focus seems to be much more on the building out of the organization.”

People who know Friedman and Zaidi well say their understanding of how to best do so is what has helped separate the Dodgers from the rest of baseball. “We have lots of really smart people working for teams,” Atlanta Braves general manager Alex Anthopoulos said. “That’s not what makes Andrew and Farhan great at what they do.” 

Anthopoulos knows better than most. He took a job with Dodgers in 2016, after spending six years as general manager of the Toronto Blue Jays, a run that culminated in an “executive of the year” award and deep playoff run. Yet, Anthopoulos insists, “I became a better GM because of the two years I spent with those guys, and it has nothing to do with anything related to strategy or what type of players to sign.” 

Asked for specific examples, Anthopoulos struggled to pinpoint one. “It’s not like they’re wise old men that give you a lesson that you take with you,” he said. “It’s just the way they look at things organizationally, the way they process things, the instincts and people skills they have, the way they work through decisions, it doesn’t matter if it’s a conversation about life or a free-agent signing. 

“Being with them was like getting a PhD,” Anthopoulos added. “Their skills are transferable to any industry.” 

Their diverse backgrounds help. Zaidi has a degree from MIT and a PhD in economics from Cal.  Friedman, a former college baseball player, began his career as an analyst for a private equity firm where his job was to assess businesses — where they’re weak, where they’re strong, where resources can and should be applied — and then make recommendations.

“And he was great at it,” said Matt Finlay, one of Friedman’s superiors at MidMark Capital. 

Since Walter took control of the Lakers, Friedman and Zaidi have operated in the background. Most of their energy, according to league sources, has gone toward behind-the-scenes work, where they are attempting to plug the organization's biggest hole. The Dodgers, under Friedman, have turned their front office into one of baseball’s largest, with robust analytics and medical staffs and multiple experienced executives.

“[Friedman] knows that the Lakers are pretty antiquated in their ways,” said an associate of his from the baseball world. “What he’s said he really wants to do is layer on the stuff they do with the Dodgers so that they can better harness all the basketball IQ that’s in the building.” 

Around February, Zaidi started placing calls to agents representing front office and medical personnel to inquire about their clients. Around three months later, the Lakers offered Steve Senior, an assistant general manager for the Minnesota Timberwolves, the job of executive vice president of basketball operations. Senior, who declined to comment, decided to remain with the Timberwolves, according to multiple league sources. 

Whether they’re still looking to fill that role is unclear. Pelinka recently told reporters the team will be hiring a pair of assistant general managers; one focused on personnel, the other on strategy and analytics. “We have started a wide search and begun interviews,” he said. That process is being led by Pelinka and longtime Lakers executive Kurt Rambis. But, according to league sources, Friedman and Zaidi have been involved in the process as well, with at least one of them typically sitting in on interviews. 

The presence of Friedman and Zaidi has led to some speculation around the NBA that Walter could eventually look to replace Pelinka, who signed a multiyear contract extension and received a title bump last April, before the sale of the team. Thus far, however, that does not appear to be the case. Pelinka has told people around the NBA that he, Friedman and Zaidi are working “in collaboration,” and that he’s excited to be backed by a free-spending ownership group. He’s also been the one running point on contract discussions with player agents. 

Bolstering the performance staff appears to be Friedman’s and Zaidi’s other priority. “We’re working in collaboration with some of the Dodgers folks to bring in a biomechanics lab,” Pelinka told reporters. Until then, players may have to get used to working with the baseball group at Dodgers Stadium. That, according to two league sources, is what the Lakers told Austin Reaves to do while he was rehabbing from an oblique injury during the playoffs. 

That confidence in their medical team, though, is not without reason. 

“They’re known for taking care of players and being able to get the most out of them,” the MLB executive says. “The giant contracts obviously play a big role, but the way Andrew and his department are able to help players get the best out of themselves has become a major recruiting tool.” 

That, Friedman has said, was one of his primary goals after joining the Dodgers. Sure, the combination of Walter’s money and the lack of a salary cap would give him a leg up on the competition. But his vision, Friedman has said, was to build something deeper and more sustainable.

“We’ve talked about this for 10-plus years now, how the real guiding-light principle for us is trying to become a destination spot — where our own players don’t want to leave and players from other organizations want to come,” Friedman recently told Sports Illustrated. “Obviously, it’s easy to set our goals to win a championship. But we feel like creating that culture not only attracts and retains star-level players but also helps get the most out of their ability. I feel like we’ve really gotten to a point where it is incredibly strong.”

The Lakers, of course, have never had much trouble selling themselves as a destination. But today’s NBA is increasingly being shaped by organizations whose edges come not from glamour, but infrastructure. The Lakers have always been able to offer stars a stage. Now, with Walter at the helm and Friedman and Zaidi lending a hand, they may soon be able to offer the machinery to match.