Netflix's new hit comedy Running Point is a must-watch TV show for anyone interested in an empowering story about women in sports. Co-created by Mindy Kaling, the first 10-episode season stars Kate Hudson as Isla Gordon, a reformed party girl whose family owns a pro basketball team, the Los Angeles Waves. Isla has loved basketball since she was young, but her father was a "sexist asshole," so he passed her over as the team's next president. But when her brother (played by Justin Theroux) lands in rehab due to a drug scandal, Isla is shockingly tapped to become the team's new owner—and the most powerful woman in basketball.
Since Running Point's premiere, sports fans have noticed that the fictional Isla sounds (and looks, TBH) similar to real-life L.A. Lakers president Jeanie Buss, who's also part of a basketball dynasty. The similarity is partially intentional, as Buss is involved in the Netflix series, serving as an executive producer. However, Buss's real-life story is much different than the show—though still one of a woman who worked to the top of the sports industry and made history. Read on for everything to know about Jeanie Buss, including her surprising connection to her somewhat on-screen counterpart, Kate Hudson.
Who are Jeanie Buss and the Buss family?
Jeanie Buss, 63, is the daughter of late real estate-mogul and former Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss and his first wife JoAnn Buss. Jeanie's the fourth of the pair's five children; her siblings are older brothers Johnny, Jim, and younger sister Janie. She also has two half-siblings, Joey and Jesse, from Jerry's relationship with Karen Demel.
Jeanie began her sports executive career at age 19. While pursuing a business degree at the University of Southern California, her father named her general manager of the Los Angeles Strings, a professional tennis team. The team went on to win two league titles, but it eventually dissolved in 1993. Buss continued her journey by running the Los Angeles Blades professional roller hockey team.
During Jeanie's teenage and young adult years, her dad Jerry Buss purchased the L.A. Lakers and turned the organization into a championship team, as seen in HBO's short-lived series Winning Time. Jerry famously planned for his children to take over the L.A. Lakers as a unit. An anonymous associate of Buss spoke about the succession plan in a 1998 Sports Illustrated interview. They said, "Jeanie is the most capable one, yet she's overlooked by her loving dad."
At the time, Jeanie was President of the former Great Western Forum (the arena in Inglewood, CA, where all his sports teams were based), a post she held for four years. In 1999, Jeanie was named the Lakers' executive vice president of business operations, fulfilling Jerry's plan to eventually have her and her brother Jim run the franchise together.
As for her personal life, Jeanie had many beaus when she was younger, including a six-month relationship with tennis star (and Never Have I Ever narrator) John McEnroe, who previously played for the Los Angeles Strings. Jeanie met her first husband, Olympic volleyball player Steve Timmons, in 1986 at the Forum, and they eventually split after three years of marriage. In 1996, she began dating then-Lakers coach Phil Jackson, which lasted 17 years.
The sports exec surprised the public by posing for a Playboy shoot in 1995. In a throwback post from Playboy's Instagram, Jeanie said of the shoot, "I posed for Playboy Magazine at a time in my life when I was 32-years-old and recently divorced. It was a decision that freed me from the expectations of others and allowed me to accept my body and myself exactly as I am."
When did Jeanie Buss become president of the L.A. Lakers?
Following Jerry Buss's death in 2013, his 66 percent stake in the team was passed down to his six children, each receiving 11 percent and Jeanie became the controlling owner. Jeanie became the team's president and representative on the NBA's Board of Governors, while her brother Jim remained executive vice president of basketball operations. All six Buss children worked in the Lakers front office in some capacity for the next four years.
In 2017, Jeanie fired her brother Jim and the Lakers' general manager Mitch Kupchak, due to the team's poor performance over the previous four seasons. Her eldest brother Johnny responded by trying to get Jeanie ousted, but she prevailed in the Succession-like battle. Eventually, Johnny and Jim agreed that Jeanie would be the controlling owner of the L.A. Lakers for the rest of her life.
"My dad had his children, but the Lakers were his baby. He expected me to protect the baby," Jeanie told CBS News in 2024. "I had to let my brother go when he was overseeing the basketball operations. Year after year, not making the playoffs—that was not the brand of Laker basketball that Dr. Buss had created."
In 2020, Jeanie became the first woman controlling owner to steward her team to an NBA championship. The win also marked her sixth title as an executive for the Lakers. Outside of basketball, Jeanie co-owns the all-female professional wrestling promotion Women of Wrestling (WOW), and she began her television-producing career with the Emmy-winning Hulu docuseries Legacy: The True Story of the LA Lakers. In September 2023, she married comedian Jay Mohr after two years of dating.
Is 'Running Point' based on Jeanie Buss? Is it based on the L.A. Lakers?
There are many similarities between Jeanie Buss and Isla Gordon: the Playboy shoot, the best friend in the front office, dating her team's coach (depending on how Running Point season 2 may go.) Also, Buss and her lifelong friend and business partner Linda Rambis, are executive producers on the Netflix series. However, while speaking to Time, Buss clarified "while we inspired so much of the story, these characters are not my family, and Isla Gordon is not me."
In an interview with Variety, Kaling confirmed that the show's writers only used Buss as a light inspiration, partly out of a desire to "protect" her.
"This is a fictionalized version of Jeanie’s life. She has real-life relationships with people, and we want to protect that by not basing anything on anyone," the writer told the outlet. "Of course, there’s flourishes that are [real]. She, famously, was in relationships with people that we’re like, 'Oh, that’s really interesting,' and we cherry-pick those things. But we want to protect her relationships."
Are Jeanie Buss and Kate Hudson friends?
To play Jeanie Buss, Running Point cast someone with a decades-spanning friendship with the L.A. Lakers owner. Rom-com queen and Isla Gordon actor Kate Hudson has actually known Buss for most of her life, ever since the pair met as L.A. natives.
In the Time interview, Buss recalled how, when she was in her 30s, she was "chauffeuring and touring Hudson as a 16-year-old around the Forum in the 1990s when her parents Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn attended L.A. Kings games."
Buss told the outlet, "I kind of took her under my wing because she's a very curious person, asked a lot of questions. I knew she could nail the part because she'd seen me in action, and she understood how the back of the house of a sports team worked. I really didn't have to coach her at all. She brought it and she nailed it."
In a Variety interview, Hudson spoke about how she related to the pressure of playing a woman with a family legacy to uphold. "Your parents have worked so hard to create a legacy. How do you protect that? How do you carry it? How do you nurture it? Jeanie’s story is very different than mine—because the arts is very different than an actual franchise—but I understand what it’s like to always want to show up, to make sure that you’re protecting what that is."
