Hours after Wednesday’s bombshell news that Dodgers owner Mark Walter was selling his majority stake in the Lakers at a record $12.5 billion valuation, Dodgers team president Stan Kasten was adamant that no changes were coming within the Dodgers organization.

Kasten also confirmed that Walter has no plans to sell the baseball team.

“This is a Lakers story, it’s not really a Dodgers story,” Kasten told reporters on Wednesday afternoon, speaking from the field at Dodger Stadium while the team took batting practice. “It really has nothing to do with the Dodgers. They’re completely separate. So there are no changes here … I think that pretty much is the whole story.”

The actual story, of course, at least appears a bit more complicated.

Walter’s sale of the Lakers to former Disney CEO Bob Iger and venture capitalist Josh Kushner shocked the sports world, given Walter had just bought the team in a $10 billion transaction a little more than a year ago.

It also came amid a federal probe into Walter’s business empire, with the Securities and Exchange Commission reportedly investigating how around $16 billion in loans from Walter-owned insurance companies ended up on the balance sheets of his TWG Global conglomerate (the group through which Walter bought the Lakers last June).

Earlier Wednesday, Bloomberg reported that TWG Global had been seeking fresh capital to reduce the loans held by its insurance companies. 

In an exclusive interview with the California Post later in the afternoon, Iger also revealed that “it was suggested to us that maybe Mark Walter would be interested in selling his stake in the Lakers” –– though did not specify why.

For many industry observers, it sparked speculation that Walter’s sudden sale of the Lakers, which came together in a matter of days this week, was related to the ongoing investigation into his businesses.

Some wondered if the Dodgers might also be in danger of being sold.

Kasten, however, disputed those notions, describing the Lakers transaction as “opportunistic” and “something that made sense” in the eyes of Walter, who bought the Dodgers through his Guggenheim Baseball Management group (of which Kasten is also involved) for $2.15 billion back in 2012.

Asked directly if there was a link between the Lakers’ sale and the ongoing SEC investigation, Kasten doubled down.

“I have no reason to think that,” he said. “No, that never came up. And Mark and I discussed it. So no, we don’t have any reason to think that. I certainly have no reason to think that.”

Kasten said he only learned of the impending Lakers sale on Tuesday, and was under the impression Walter “wasn’t contemplating” any Lakers deal before being approached by Iger and Kushner, who is the founder and managing partner of venture capital firm Thrive Capital.

“I think he was surprised by it,” Kasten said. “That’s what he has expressed to me. Mark had no plan to do this. This just came up, and he thought about it and said yes.”

Kasten did acknowledge that he had only limited information on specifics of the sale process (“I can’t tell you anyone’s motivation, I can’t speak to that,” he said) and that he has no knowledge of the federal investigation into Walter’s other businesses, outside of what has been reported publicly.

“That has nothing to do with the Dodgers either,” Kasten said. “We haven’t even been consulted on that.”

Another question that arose in the wake of Wednesday’s news was whether the Dodgers’ vast financial resources –– which have helped them construct league-record payrolls of more than $400 million, before luxury taxes, the last two seasons –– could be impacted by the apparent uncertainty suddenly surrounding Walter’s non-sports-related businesses.

But Kasten was declarative in his answer to that, saying: “I have no reason to think that.”

Instead, he returned to his original point; that while the Lakers sale came as a surprise to those within the Dodgers organization, nothing about the baseball team’s internal operations would be impacted, starting with Walter’s status as owner and chairman of the team.

“It’s a Lakers story,” he repeated of Wednesday’s news. “So there’s no real shock on the Dodger side, except for people asking inevitable questions, to which I can give the only assurance that I can: That everything is the same here. No change at all.”