Lakers News
Lakers owner Mark Walter suffered a stroke late in 2024, which has brought on questions about his health.
Jul 30, 2026, 8:31 PM UTC
Contrary to the previous ownership, Mark Walter is not a front-facing figure. Jeanie Buss was a prominent face of the Lakers, whether it was radio interview or courtside appearances.
Walter, however, is not. He’s not a man who will do interviews, nor does he go out of his way to be seen when he does sit courtside. That makes him a much more mysterious or unknown character.
It makes it hard to get a read on him and it also means news about him doesn’t trickle out quite as often as it did with the Buss family, though that is a low bar to clear. All that context leads to this week when a story in The Wall Street Journal by Andrew Beaton, Justin Baer and Margot Patrick revealed that Walter suffered a stroke late in 2024, which has led to questions about his health.
The story is behind a paywall, so here is a snippet of it posted onto Twitter/X.
Here’s the section, for those without social media:
Since then, Walter’s health status has become a matter of concern inside his business empire, with varying opinions on whether lingering effects from the stroke have impacted his fitness to lead his businesses, the people said.
Walter, 66 years old, is now at the center of a federal probe into the workings of his financial empire and whether private-credit deals involving his companies constituted fraud. The transactions under scrutiny go back as far as 2019.
In the course of the probe, the fact that Walter had suffered a stroke came up in conversations his legal team had with investigators, according to people familiar with the situation. It wasn’t clear why the matter was discussed.
A TWG Global spokesperson said, “Mark has the business acumen and judgment required to lead the company as he has done for more than 30 years. For anyone to suggest otherwise is factually inaccurate. He has the full support of shareholders, clients and business partners.”
Walter is also part of a bigger story right now about an ongoing federal probe centered around loan fraud. I’m not going to pretend I know enough about the situation or loan fraud to give much expertise there, but, ideally, you don’t want your owner to be under federal investigation.
There isn’t a lot that can be said about the stroke, either. Because Walter never puts himself in the public eye, it’s impossible to know what type of effects the stroke may have had. For now, it’s basically just something to note and potentially monitor moving forward.
He’s still around at Lakers games and various functions and, considering this news only came out indirectly, it could be assumed that it’s not something that has limited him too much. But, again, that’s purely baseless speculation.
But if you thought all the drama and intrigue around the Lakers owner was going away with the Buss family, it appears I have some bad news for you.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at@JacobRude or on Bluesky at@jacobrude.bsky.social.