LeBron James, Nikola Jokić reportedly meet over $5bn upstart to rival NBA | Basketball
A large-scale meeting last week in France between LeBron James, his trading partner Maverick Carter and Nikola Jokić, Miško Ražnatović, focused on a new 5 billion dollars basketball league, according to a report by Fronter Office Sports, which quoted several familiar sources with the problem.
The proposed league, carried out by Carter, would star six male teams and six women who go together to eight world cities in a tour format. Inspired by Liv Golf and Formula One, the League aims to offer players, which the NBA is currently currently prohibiting active athletes.
Ražnatović, a powerful figure in European basketball, published a photo of Reunion on Instagram this weekend. The legend, labeled in Saint-Tropez, was teasing: “summer 2025 is the ideal moment to make major plans for the fall of 2026.” This photo fueled speculation on a potential team between James and Jokić, but confirmed sources at the Sports of the Front Office La Réunion was not linked to the NBA.
Authorize Instagram content?
This article includes the content provided by Instagram. We ask for your authorization before everything is loaded, as they can use cookies and other technologies. To see this content, Click on “Authorize and continue”.
Carter started launching the league earlier this year, with Bloomberg reporting in January that he was trying to collect $ 5 billion in funding. Donors already include the Singapore government, the public investment fund of Saudi Arabia, SC Holdings, UBS and investors such as the co-founder of Skype, Geoff Prentice, and the former director of Facebook Grady Burnett.
Unlike the unequaled league adjacent to the WNBA, which allows double participation, Carter’s company should require full -time commitments, effectively excluding the participation of the NBA unless the rules of the league change.
The NBA, on the other hand, continues its own expansion in Europe. The Adam Silver commissioner and deputy commissioner Mark Tatum met British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in London last week to discuss the plans of an NBA league based in Europe in partnership with Fiba. As part of this effort, the NBA announced that the Orlando Magic and Memphis Grizzlies will play regular season games in Berlin and London in January 2026.
EUROLEAGUE officials postponed the NBA expansion talks. “We told them, as we said publicly, we do not think that the new league is something that would help the market,” Euroleague CEO, Paulius Motiejūnas on Tuesday.
