NBA journalist Yaron Weitzman recently released a new book called “A Hollywood Ending: The Dreams and Drama of the LeBron Lakers.”
He says that the Los Angeles Lakers organization threatened to sue him to prevent that from happening.
Weitzman has covered the NBA for over a decade, writing for outlets such as Fox Sports, Bleacher Report, SB Nation, SLAM, and Awful Announcing. He’s also the author of “Tanking to the Top,” about the Philadelphia 76ers and “The Process.”
“From the Succession-like power struggle between the Buss children, to the rise of LeBron’s landscape-altering talent agency and its attempts to assert its own power within the Lakers’ walls, to the evolution of LeBron’s priorities and political voice, ‘A Hollywood Ending’ is the definitive story of an American icon’s final years on stage, one portraying him, a fabled NBA franchise, and the world of modern professional sports in a light never seen before,” reads the book description.
On Sunday, Weitzman posted a TikTok video detailing how the Lakers organization enlisted the help of a well-known defamation lawyer to put pressure on him.
@yaronweitzman The Lakers threatened to sue me to prevent you from reading this book #lakers #lebron #booktok #authorsoftiktok ♬ original sound – Yaron Weitzman
“I started working on this book around January 2023,” said Weitzman. “Around that time, when you work on a project like this, you reach out to the principals. So I got in touch with Jeannie Buss and the Lakers. Jeannie and I actually engaged in a few messages. We even met a couple of times. They were off-the-record meetings. Normally, I wouldn’t be revealing that to you, except she was the one that put these meetings in public first.”
The video then shows a clip of Buss, telling an interviewer, “There’s somebody that’s out there writing a book, and he said to me that I have a reputation of running a bare bones organization.”
“To be clear, I didn’t accuse Jeanie or the Lakers of anything,” continued Weitzman. “All I do as a reporter is ask other people questions, do the reporting, give Jeanie and the principals the chance to respond. I am far from the first person to bring up the fact that the Lakers under Jeanie Buss might have not spent as lavishly as other organizations.”
It’s worth noting that the Buss family entered into an agreement in June to sell the majority ownership of the Lakers to Mark Walter for approximately $10 billion.
Weitzman explained that when he sent the Lakers organization some items they might want to respond to, he got a very pointed response.
“…The way it works when you work on a project like this is, when you’re done, you send the principals some fact-checking. Not positive stuff, just the stuff they might want to respond to,” he said. “I did that for the Lakers, and instead of getting on the phone with me, they decided to hire a famous defamation lawyer named Marty Singer to handle their dealings with me, and he eventually sent me a very strongly written letter. For example, they said that my reporting was, ‘Full of thinly-veiled misogynistic smears, revealing a chauvinism and negative bias that undermines the reliability of my sources.’
“Singer then punctuated the letter by adding that, I want to be incredibly clear with you. There are many times when individuals threaten to sue with neither the reputation to stand up or scrutiny nor the resources to pursue a strong libel claim. Please have no doubt neither of these issues apply here.’”
Weitzman added that he “absolutely” did not defame Buss or the Lakers in his book. So, we’ll see if the franchise makes good on its alleged threat now that it’s available for purchase.