OT: LeBron wants to own an NBA franchise down the line, hints at a rival league if not allowed

MalagaBulls · Post #1 » by **MalagaBulls** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 2:32 am

Vía SAS:

Post #2 » by **dougthonus** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 2:35 am

MalagaBulls wrote:Vía SAS:

Read on Twitter

I don't think the NBA would mind LeBron as an owner, like I'm sure they'd approve him.

That doesn't resolve the issue of whether he has enough money to buy a franchise or if someone want to sell him one.

And while I think LeBron as an owner would be fine for the league, we already saw Jordan as an owner didn't really move the needle in any particular way. There's no major threat to the NBA that LeBron goes and owns a new Saudi backed European team, but probably a great option for him if they just give him like a billion dollar franchise to get his name associated with it which is plausible and probably a way better financial outcome for LeBron than sinking his own money into an NBA team.

jc23 · Post #3 » by **jc23** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:23 am

Does we want to be the sole owner? if not then he will be an owner. Its no secret that he has had his unofficial bid on the Las Vegas team for years. Im sure the nba wants this; only doubt would be catering to his ego. I feel like if he gets a team he will become Jerry Jones on steroids.

Ccwatercraft · Post #4 » by **Ccwatercraft** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 5:24 am

jc23 wrote:Does we want to be the sole owner? if not then he will be an owner. Its no secret that he has had his unofficial bid on the Las Vegas team for years. Im sure the nba wants this; only doubt would be catering to his ego. I feel like if he gets a team he will become Jerry Jones on steroids.

I think he'd be a good owner, I'm guessing he'd need a huge money group behind him, aren't we talking 4 billion minimum and it goes up from there?

MalagaBulls · Post #5 » by **MalagaBulls** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 6:56 am

Ccwatercraft wrote:
jc23 wrote:Does we want to be the sole owner? if not then he will be an owner. Its no secret that he has had his unofficial bid on the Las Vegas team for years. Im sure the nba wants this; only doubt would be catering to his ego. I feel like if he gets a team he will become Jerry Jones on steroids.

I think he'd be a good owner, I'm guessing he'd need a huge money group behind him, aren't we talking 4 billion minimum and it goes up from there?

SAS said 7B for any franchise.

Post #6 » by **coldfish** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 1:57 pm

IMO, Lebron as an owner would be a problem. You would likely have a scenario where you had Klutch directing players to his team. It would screw up the entire league as players held out and demanded trades left and right.

Would be interesting if they started another league. At the end of the day, the NBA is just laundry. They are able to extract a lot from players, TV stations and fans due to their monopoly status but if the best players moved, it would come down like a house of cards. The new league would have to have a good bit of financing but if someone were to front billions of dollars of cash to get it going, the NBA might be in real trouble.

League Circles · Post #7 » by **League Circles** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:14 pm

I think Lebron and/or his "camp" perceive "29 owners refusing to mandate that the 30th be forced to sell to Lebron" as "the league NOT ALLOWING Lebron to be an owner."

Lmfao

League Circles · Post #8 » by **League Circles** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:14 pm

Maybe he just thinks he should be entitled to be the face and controlling partner in an expansion team, but still, **** off Lebron. You outbid others or stfu.

League Circles · Post #9 » by **League Circles** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:15 pm

IMO a competitor league will sink all leagues indefinitely. People only want to watch the best players, together.

Post #10 » by **fleet** » Sat Jan 18, 2025 4:21 pm

The NBA’s decline has only been hastened by Lebron. He may as well go as far as he can with that

Post #11 » by **dougthonus** » Sun Jan 19, 2025 3:33 pm

coldfish wrote:IMO, Lebron as an owner would be a problem. You would likely have a scenario where you had Klutch directing players to his team. It would screw up the entire league as players held out and demanded trades left and right.

Would be interesting if they started another league. At the end of the day, the NBA is just laundry. They are able to extract a lot from players, TV stations and fans due to their monopoly status but if the best players moved, it would come down like a house of cards. The new league would have to have a good bit of financing but if someone were to front billions of dollars of cash to get it going, the NBA might be in real trouble.

I think you are understating the value of the league.

The NCAA doesn't have the best players, people love and follow it. The league has traditions and fans and values.

There will certainly be some people who will follow an upstart league, but especially if it is a European league, how many US people are going to go do that? I'd guess almost none, even if they get some amount of the best players. PEople will just instead follow the best players that are left here and continue going to games in their local cities and rooting for the jersey's.

If there Jokic and Wemby had just stayed in Europe, do you think you'd see a big defection of fans to European basketball? We'd probably just question if they were really that good afterall and ignore them all together.

While it is certainly plausible that the Saudi's could come up with enough money to effectively buy every star player in the NBA, we already saw them try to do that with the PGA tour and it didn't work out at all. Many players won't want to leave regardless of the money, and the Saudi's still seem to have some limits on the insanity they will spend, and they have to outbid by like 5x1 in many cases and on a grand scale that doesn't seem plausible necessarily.

This isn't to say the NBA couldn't be damaged, and so maybe this picks at the definition of "real trouble", but given they just signed decade long new TV deals, I think they're actually positioned to be incredibly stable regardless of what happens.