L.A. Lakers History

When Jack Kent Cooke bought the Lakers in 1965, the deal was worth over $5,000,000, and was the biggest sports transaction up until that point. Frank Ryan and Bob Short were the previous owners of the Lakers and when they heard the Celtics were being sold for $3,000,000, they decided it was time to cash in. Short was the leader of a group that paid $150,000 for the team eight years earlier, and wanted to be paid in cash. It took 12 bank presidents to roll the cash around in carts through an underground tunnel from one New York bank to another, and on September 16, 1965, Cook announced the deal was done.

Cooke would later admit that he didn’t watch basketball and had never heard of the Lakers before, but his financial adviser told him it was a good idea to buy the team and it worked out to Cooke’s advantage. Cooke would go on to be the owner of the Lakers for 14 years, winning a championship in 1972 and in 1979, he sold the Lakers to Dr. Jerry Buss for a staggering amount of $67.5 million, the biggest deal in sports history.