For the first time in more than four decades, a new name controls the Los Angeles Lakers. And it's one the locals should be familiar with.

Mark Walter, the principal owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers and plenty of other sports teams, struck a deal Wednesday to purchase a majority stake of the Lakers that values the team at $ 10 billion, the highest price for a team in the history of professional sports.

To put it another way, he purchased the Lakers for six Tampa Bay Rays organizations.

A new boss is always going to inspire questions among the team's employees and fans. It was the same case when Walter's consortium bought the bankrupt Dodgers for a then-eye-watering price of $ 2.1 billion in 2012. It's safe to say that has worked out for all involved, so much so that Walter figures to take the reins of the Lakers with as much credibility as you can get in a situation such as this.

Success is never guaranteed, though, especially when MLB and the NBA are structured so differently. There are many things Walter oversaw with the Dodgers that he won't be able to do with the Lakers, and there are also ways he can improve the Lakers that aren't possible in baseball. 

Here's what you need to know about what it could mean for an NBA team to be run by Mark Walter.

The Dodgers' success has been about a lot more than money

The one-sentence explanation of the Dodgers' success over the past 15 years goes something like, "Some really rich guys bought the team, brought in some really smart people to run it and got a winner." But there is much more to say about the Dodgers' rise from literal bankruptcy to the envy of all MLB teams.

Walter's tenure began as the lead investor in the Guggenheim Partners' purchase of the Dodgers after the disastrous McCourt era. The team was mediocre, attendance was declining, and the finances were in free fall. Let's put it this way: The soon-to-be-divorcing Frank and Jamie McCourt paid a Russian spiritualist hundreds of thousands of dollars to channel positive vibes to the team — from Boston.

So the bar for Guggenheim was pretty low when it bought the team, but it still took quick steps to earn credibility with fans. Bringing in Magic Johnson as the face of the new ownership group was a great start, as was adding veteran executive Stan Kasten to serve as team president.

The big move, though, was made on Aug. 25, 2012, when the Dodgers traded for All-Stars Adrian Gonzalez, Carl Crawford and Josh Beckett from the Boston Red Sox and took on a quarter of a billion dollars in contract obligations.

The players themselves had varying levels of success in Los Angeles, but the trade was pivotal due to the message it sent. They didn't make the playoffs that year, but the Dodgers were a big-money team again.

Walter and friends were also prepared to make major changes to the team's baseball operations department beyond giving it a larger checkbook. Ned Colletti was the team's general manager when Guggenheim took over and was fairly well-respected around baseball. He oversaw the drafting of Clayton Kershaw and Corey Seager before the team exchanged hands, then the Gonzalez trade and the signing of Yasiel Puig.

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Guggenheim let Colletti steer the team for three seasons, with a pair of unsuccessful playoff runs, and then removed him from his post for the guy they probably wanted all along: Andrew Friedman, then the analytics-minded general manager of the small-market Rays and still the head of the team's baseball ops.

The manager position was a similar story, with Don Mattingly exiting stage left a year later for Friedman's pick of Dave Roberts, who still holds the position. From there, the Dodgers went to work. Friedman built a player development machine that is still the best in baseball and then began spending as if his job is on the line (it isn't).

When Shohei Ohtani signed with the Dodgers, he made it very clear that the team's previous success mattered to him. Hence why he can opt out of his $ 700 million bargain of a contract if Walter or Friedman leave the team.

All of this is to say, yes, you can probably expect Walter to spend as much he needs to spend to make the Lakers a consistently elite — not just good, elite — team, but it is very fair to wonder if general manager Rob Pelinka and head coach J.J. Redick will be the ones he tasks with running the team in the long term.

The path to large-market success sounds so simple: Give smart people all the money they need to build a winner. But the most important part of that formula is picking the right people. What are the odds Walter thinks he's lucky enough that the right people are already in the building?

The Lakers have been a very different team than the Dodgers

The Dodgers and Lakers are easily the two most popular teams in Los Angeles and among the most valuable teams in their leagues. But from a purely payroll perspective, only one team has really acted like it.

While the Dodgers have been in the top five in payroll every season since their first full year under Walter, the Lakers have largely operated as something like a family business over the past decade. While the deeper-pocketed owners of the Golden State Warriors and Los Angeles Clippers have openly shrugged the luxury tax as the cost of doing business, the Lakers have rarely taken a significant step over the line.

Since 2013, the only time the Lakers have paid more than seven figures in luxury-tax payments was the stretch from 2021 to '23, when the team attempted to pair Russell Westbrook with LeBron James and Anthony Davis. It didn't go well.

The Lakers have certainly commanded attention over the past decade or so, but their actual success is more attributable to LeBron James wanting to be closer to his family and business interests than any directives from the ownership box.

If his Dodgers tenure is any indication, that figures to change under Walter. The NBA penalizes teams for going above the salary cap a lot more than MLB does with teams above its luxury tax threshold, but basketball is still a sport where a high-spending owner matters.

It's also worth noting that Jeanie Buss will reportedly remain the Lakers' governor for "a number of years," but there are obviously things a team can do differently when someone else is responsible for the checkbook.

There are some areas in which the Lakers already do well

If we want to assume that Walter wants to turn the Lakers into the Dodgers of MLB, let's talk about what that means.

Being able to sign Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Yoshinobu Yamamoto will help any organization, but winning at the Dodgers' level also requires the ability to churn out talent even when you're regularly in the playoffs. The Dodgers have not picked in the top 10 of the MLB Draft since drafting Kershaw in 2006, yet they are a regular at the top of MLB farm system rankings.

Walker Buehler, Gavin Lux, Will Smith, Andy Pages, Gavin Stone, Dustin May, Tony Gonsolin, Alex Verdugo, Michael Busch, Emmet Sheehan, Dalton Rushing, Bobby Miller — not every player becomes an All-Star or even stays with the Dodgers, who aren't afraid of trading younger players for veterans, but those player development wins matter. If simply spending big to get a few good players made you a good team, the Los Angeles Angels would be competing for SoCal supremacy.

Funnily enough, finding talent like that is one area where the Lakers have actually been one of the best in the business over the past decade.

Say what you will about Rob Pelinka lucking into James and then Luka Dončić or how much of a role he actually played in the Anthony Davis trade, but finds such as Alex Caruso (Summer League signing), Austin Reaves (undrafted), Talen Horton-Tucker (46th overall) and Max Christie (35th) are how you fill out good rosters and make trades for players you want. Before Pelinka, the Lakers also found Larry Nance Jr. (27th overall), Ivica Zubac (32nd) and Kyle Kuzma (27th).

Some of those players represent failures for the Lakers as much as successes — the Zubac trade, letting Caruso walk — but if you're looking for a thing Walter might like about the team right now, it's the scouting department.

And, of course …

One major step is already done for Mark Walter and the Lakers

Walter announced his Dodgers arrival with the Gonzalez trade, which stunned MLB at the time, but that's the funny part here. The Lakers already made that trade.

The Lakers' situation was looking pretty dire before a certain night earlier this year. James was 40 years old, Davis has never exactly shown he can be The Guy for a real playoff team, and nearly every draft pick available had already been traded. If James retired, the Lakers were staring at a stretch in which they had few resources to replace him.

Then Nico Harrison had a brilliant idea.

There might never be another trade like the Dončić deal in NBA history, but the Lakers now have a player to build around for the next half-decade. Giving Dončić the nine-figure contract the Dallas Mavericks were so hesitant about figures to be a no-brainer for Walter, and then the rest of the work begins.

But getting an All-NBA player in his mid-20s who can reach the NBA Finals is the hardest part for any organization. There's still plenty to do, but Walter is starting at third base compared to where the Dodgers were when he took over.

Of course, building a good MLB team and building a good NBA team are very different enterprises. MLB rewards patience, and player development is just as important as scouting these days, if not more so. A single superstar — or even three of them — does not guarantee success. Meanwhile, in the NBA, one player can transform a franchise.

Not everything Walter did or oversaw with the Dodgers will translate to the NBA, but the Lakers with an owner who can spend big and put the right people in charge sure sounds like something that should worry the rest of the NBA.

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