In 1979, Jerry Buss bought the Lakers and turned professional basketball into a Hollywood production: courtside celebrities, a fast, camera-ready style of play, an arena built to feel like a stage. He called it Showtime, and it worked so well it became the template every league in the world eventually copied.
Forty-seven years later, the team Buss built as entertainment is being bought by the man who spent his career running the biggest entertainment company on earth. Bob Iger, who built Disney around owning stories the world already loved, is now buying the story Buss invented.
