NBA teams keep ditching stars
Who doesn't want Luka Dončić, Jaylen Brown, Karl-Anthony Towns, or Giannis Antetokounmpo?
In hindsight, now that he has proved to be a playoff legend with a ring to prove it, it’s a little weird that the Wolves bailed on Karl-Anthony Towns in 2024. It was earth-shattering when the Mavericks bailed on Luka Dončić in 2025. Those feelings resurfaced in 2026 when the Celtics traded Jaylen Brown. And over all those years, the Bucks dithered over what to do with Giannis Antetokounmpo, but finally traded him to the Miami Heat.
And this summer, an NBA front office source shared with me a theory: these four moves are connected. The throughline: those teams had all recently changed hands, and the new billionaires made sober choices in preventing what were about to become insane contracts.
In some cases, billionaires and stars are simply bonded, in ways that nuke a team’s long-term salary cap planning. For example: Will Mat Ishbia really play hardball with Devin Booker? Mark Cuban has already said he would have never traded Luka. I’d be shocked if Joe Lacob ever turned on Stephen Curry.
But the four cases of traded stars introduce a new variable: a new billionaire, without such history.
The decision to trade Luka came quickly on the heels of Miriam Adelson taking over the Mavericks.
Bill Chisholm has made hard cap-driven choices running the Celtics that upend some of the team building accomplished in the Wyc Grousbeck era.
The Giannis trade came after new Bucks honcho Jimmy Haslam set a deadline for Giannis to sign an extension or accept a trade.
When KAT was traded, Glen Taylor technically controlled the Wolves, but Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez were years into their now-complete process to take over the team.
What is it about newbie billionaires being willing to sever ties with stars?
