No matter the hot-button topic, you can usually find an adjacent NBA angle. Of course, the league creates an incredible amount of tantalizing basketball-related news as well, including free-agency spectacles and labor disputes. It\u2019s actually one of America\u2019s great debate-generating institutions.<\/p>\n
This list, voted on by a committee of eight writers and editors, also serves as a reminder that while NBA superstars can often feel larger than life, their stories are also our stories. \u2013 Brian Bennett<\/p>\n
1. Kobe Bryant killed in helicopter crash<\/p>\n
The defining moment of the last 25 years of NBA basketball was the saddest, an unthinkable tragedy, an unimaginable loss, an unbearable amount of grief.<\/p>\n
On Jan. 26, 2020 \u2014 one day after LeBron James passed him on the NBA\u2019s all-time scoring list \u2014 Kobe Bryant boarded a helicopter with his daughter Gianna and six other players and parents from Gianna Bryant\u2019s youth basketball team. All eight passengers and the pilot died when the helicopter crashed in the Calabasas, Calif. hills.<\/p>\n
Pain radiated throughout the NBA, with the game\u2019s greatest from Jerry West to Michael Jordan tearfully mourning with Lakers and basketball fans across the world. Kobe and Gianna Bryant have been forever immortalized in tributes ranging from a statue outside the Los Angeles arena Bryant called home to murals on six of the world\u2019s seven continents. \u2014 Dan Woike<\/p>\n
Kobe Bryant, 1978-2020:<\/strong> Coverage from The Athletic<\/a><\/p>\n 2. Malice at the Palace, Stern institutes dress code<\/p>\n When the dust settled on one of the darkest nights in NBA history \u2014 the brawl between the Detroit Pistons and Indiana Pacers<\/a> that spilled into the stands and pitted players against fans on Nov. 19, 2004 \u2014 David Stern cracked down hard.<\/p>\n Ron Artest was suspended for the rest of the season, which totaled 86 games, including the playoffs. Stephen Jackson got 30 games, and Jermaine O\u2019Neal\u2019s original 25-game suspension was reduced to 15. Ben Wallace also was suspended six games for Detroit.<\/p>\n Stern also introduced a dress code for players<\/a>, making it mandatory that they wear \u201cbusiness attire\u201d to games. The move sparked controversy, with critics believing it targeted young Black males and had racial undertones. The dress code was eventually relaxed years later, but aftershocks of that night still linger to this day. \u2014 Jon Krawczynski\u00a0<\/p>\n 3. \u201cThe Decision\u201d<\/p>\n The NBA had never been brought to heel by a single player\u2019s individual choice about where he\u2019d play basketball.<\/p>\n But LeBron James, already a two-time league MVP at age 25, made it clear he was going to control every aspect of his impending free agency in 2010 \u2014 and any team that wanted to make a pitch would do it on his terms.<\/p>\n So a fifth of the league\u2019s teams made the pilgrimage to Cleveland the first week of July to plead their case, after which James would tell the world where he was going during a 75-minute special on ESPN.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Decision<\/a>,\u201d as the special came to be known, eventually delivered on its stated task. A clearly uncomfortable James, at a Boys and Girls Club in Greenwich, Conn., after almost an hour, finally told the world he would \u201ctake my talents to South Beach and join the Miami Heat.\u201d<\/p>\n But the bigger impact \u2014 the dawn of the player empowerment era \u2014 was overshadowed by the near-unanimous criticism of how James\u2019 camp devised and pulled off the TV show. It was followed with a meltdown by many in Cleveland, including the Cavaliers\u2019 owner, Dan Gilbert, who pilloried the once-favorite son of the city in a press release \u2014 written in the never-to-be-forgotten Comic Sans font. \u2014 David Aldridge\u00a0<\/p>\n 4. The Bubble<\/p>\n The NBA \u201cBubble\u201d at Disney World for a period of more than three months in the pandemic summer and early fall of 2020, was a success by almost any measure.<\/p>\n There were zero cases of COVID among the 700 NBA players and team staff who were there. No playoff games were canceled and a champion was crowned, which meant there was no violation of the league\u2019s multibillion-dollar TV contract. Some, according to Daryl Morey<\/a>,\u00a0suggest the Lakers\u2019 championship deserves an asterisk.<\/p>\n Tell that to LeBron James. The season almost stopped again, and for good, when the Bucks walked out before a playoff game against the Orlando Magic in protest of the Jacob Blake shooting in Kenosha, Wis. (The Bucks and Magic would play the game three days later.)<\/p>\n James needed to sleep on it<\/a> the night after the protest to decide if he was leaving The Bubble. If he left, the whole league would\u2019ve followed him. A phone call from former President Barack Obama swayed James to stay. \u2014 Joe Vardon\u00a0<\/p>\n 5. Kobe Bryant\u2019s sexual assault trial<\/p>\n Right as Kobe Bryant\u2019s on-court power was reaching its zenith, accusations of a sexual assault left the Lakers star potentially facing significant jail time.<\/p>\n On June 30, 2003, Bryant was accused of a non-consensual sexual encounter<\/a> with a 19-year-old hotel employee. He was arrested, and stood trial for one count of felony sexual assault. He maintained the encounter was consensual. His defense team\u2019s tactics toward the accuser, including saying her name in open court, drew strong criticism.<\/p>\n For more than a year, Bryant juggled his job playing in the NBA with the court case<\/a>. In 2004, charges were dropped when the accuser no longer wanted to testify.<\/p>\n \u201cAlthough I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did,\u201d he said as part of a statement issued the day charges were dropped<\/a>. \u201cAfter months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.\u201d<\/p>\n Bryant and the accuser settled a civil case<\/a> for an undisclosed amount in 2005. \u2014 Woike<\/p>\n 6. Utah-OKC game postponed because of COVID<\/p>\n \u201cShould I go and get tested?\u201d<\/p>\n On March 11, 2020, that was the question I got from an Uber driver, who took me and my colleagues from lunch in Oklahoma City after a shootaround to our respective hotels.<\/p>\n That lunch was fun and festive. A few hours later, the world changed.<\/p>\n It was eerie being in the arena where the NBA world shut down<\/a> the night Utah Jazz stars Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell tested positive for COVID.<\/p>\n The silence amid panic was unsettling. As reporters, we had to balance our jobs with fear for our health and worried calls from family members. We ended that night in the Jazz locker room \u2014 not as reporters with NBA players and staff, but as a group of human beings.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a night nobody will forget: the game being stopped at tip-off, the halftime show being performed before the game to keep a confused crowd engaged, the murmur through the arena as the news hit social media, the public address announcer imploring calm as everyone was ordered to leave the building.<\/p>\n You can never forget the unforgettable. \u2014 Tony Jones<\/p>\n 7. Tim Donaghy betting scandal<\/p>\n It was among the NBA\u2019s nightmare scenarios: In 2006, the FBI opened an investigation into allegations that one of the league\u2019s referees was betting on games he officiated in concert with organized crime figures. A year later, Tim Donaghy, who\u2019d been an official for 13 years, was identified as the referee in question.<\/p>\n Donaghy admitted that he\u2019d bet on NBA games during a four-year period. Usually, he bet on games that he worked. But he also was passing along intelligence about other games to gamblers, providing inside information on the officiating crews working those games and alleged patterns of calls by those referees that could help predict how they\u2019d call their games.<\/p>\n Donaghy ultimately pled guilty<\/a> to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to engage in wagering over state lines. He then accused other referees of fixing games at the league\u2019s behest, but federal officials didn\u2019t find evidence to investigate further.<\/p>\n An independent investigation in 2008 by attorney Larry Pedowitz found that no other referees had fixed games<\/a>, though they had broken then-existing league rules by betting on golf matches they played in and by visiting and playing cards at casinos. Donaghy was sentenced to 15 months in prison. \u2014 Aldridge<\/p>\n 8. Donald Sterling forced to sell Clippers<\/p>\n The Clippers were one game into the 2014 playoffs, looking like the best team the organization had ever assembled with NBA champion Doc Rivers on the sidelines, when TMZ published an audio recording<\/a> of owner Donald Sterling\u2019s racist comments, including him telling his alleged mistress V. Stiviano that he didn\u2019t want her posting photos with Magic Johnson or bringing Black people to games as her guest.<\/p>\n The story became a national scandal and nearly resulted in a player-led boycott<\/a>. The NBA and commissioner Adam Silver, who took over for David Stern in February 2014, acted swiftly, banning Sterling for life four days later<\/a>. By the summer, the team had been sold to Steve Ballmer. \u2014 Woike<\/p>\n 9. SuperSonics move to OKC, become Thunder<\/p>\n For four decades, the Seattle SuperSonics had been one of the NBA\u2019s more colorful franchises. Its alumni included Spencer Haywood, Slick Watts, Lenny Wilkens, Dennis Johnson, Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, Tom Chambers, Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp.<\/p>\n But the Sonics wanted a new arena in the early 2000s. Despite intensive lobbying by David Stern, the Washington state legislature declined to provide funding for one.<\/p>\n That proved fatal. In 2006, Starbucks magnate Howard Schultz sold the Sonics to a group led by Oklahoma City businessman Clay Bennett. After pedestrian attempts to revive an arena deal in Seattle failed, Bennett did what Seattle fans feared was the plan all along, announcing he would move the team to Oklahoma City.<\/p>\n Local fan groups and civic officials tried desperately to litigate a way to keep the team in town, but after weeks of back and forth, Seattle settled with Bennett for $75 million<\/a>, allowing the team to relocate to OKC for the 2008-09 season. \u2014 Aldridge<\/p>\n 10. Chris Paul trade vetoed for \u201cbasketball reasons\u201d<\/p>\n The Twitter meme for Chris Paul\u2019s time on the Lakers<\/a> has him in a Hornets jersey at 7:05, a Lakers jersey from 7:06 to 9:22 and then back in the Hornets jersey at 9:23.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a hilarious look into the short amount of time we thought Prime CP3, aka the Point God, was teaming up with Kobe Bryant on the Lake Show in December of 2011. He was briefly traded to the Lakers following the end of the 2011 lockout and then David Stern vetoed the trade. The NBA actually owned the Hornets at that time, as they purchased the franchise from George Shinn in 2010. They wanted it out of his incapable hands as they searched for someone new to take the franchise.<\/p>\n Technically, any owner has the power to veto a trade by their team, and the NBA\u2019s message was Stern did it for \u201cbasketball reasons.\u201d<\/a> We also know Stern was getting pressured by certain owners to not allow the trade to happen. Instead of ending up with Lamar Odom, Luis Scola, Kevin Martin, Goran Dragic and a 2012 first (via the Knicks), the Hornets ended up with Chris Kaman, Al-Farouq Aminu, Eric Gordon and a 2012 first (via the TImberwolves) when they traded him to the Clippers on Dec. 11, 2011.<\/p>\n \u201cBasketball reasons,\u201d you say? Maybe? It wasn\u2019t a transaction because the league was trying to balance harmony with team owners while still ratifying the new CBA. Transactions happen in a front office.<\/p>\n This feels like it happened in a boardroom. \u2013 Zach Harper<\/p>\n 11. The 2011 lockout<\/p>\n A revisionist-history thought: Was the 2011 lockout, as dumb as it all seemed at the time, actually a good thing long-term for the league, a necessary evil for the two-decade run of labor peace that followed?\u00a0 (The last CBA doesn\u2019t expire until 2030).<\/p>\n The agreement gave the players 51 percent of basketball-related income, a figure which has essentially stuck through the last two agreements, as has much of the luxury tax and revenue sharing language.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, it cost us 16 games from the start of the 2011-12 schedule and a lot of quality from the rest of it, as the league shoehorned 66 games (including back-to-back-to-backs!) into a schedule that started on Christmas \u2014 after the mayhem of packing an entire offseason into roughly four days before training camps started. \u2014 Hollinger<\/p>\n \n Gilbert Arenas made light of his bringing guns into the Wizards locker room. The NBA suspended him after the game. (Photo: Jesse D. Garrabrant \/ NBAE via Getty Images)<\/p>\n 12. Arenas brings guns to the locker room<\/p>\n \u201cPick 1.<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n That was the note, written by Washington Wizards star Gilbert Arenas and left for his teammate Javaris Crittenton that sparked one of the league\u2019s most notorious sagas in December 2009. Their dispute over Arenas\u2019 unpaid gambling debt led to Arenas bringing four guns into an NBA locker room, daring Crittenton to follow through with the threats he\u2019d lobbed.<\/p>\n For a league that was trying to keep its image clean, it was a PR disaster<\/a>. For the men at the center of it all, it was life-changing.<\/p>\n David Stern suspended both players<\/a> for the final four months of the season, with Arenas traded to Orlando in the following summer and Crittenton unofficially exiled from the league. Arenas\u2019 once-electric NBA career never recovered.<\/p>\n Less than two years after the incident, Crittenton attempted to gun down a man<\/a> who had robbed him in Atlanta and accidentally killed a 22-year-old mother of four<\/a>. He spent a decade in prison for involuntary manslaughter, and was released in April of 2023. \u2014 Sam Amick<\/p>\n 13. The 2016 salary cap spike<\/p>\n Life rarely gives you chances to spend a quarter-billion dollars of someone else\u2019s money in less than an hour. Thanks to the 2016 cap spike, I got that opportunity.<\/p>\n Thanks to a new deal, a massive increase in TV revenue resulted in a huge one-year jump in the salary cap in the summer of 2016. It was the result of the league and player\u2019s association falling to agree on the concept of \u201ccap smoothing\u201d: spreading the jump over multiple years instead of one. Instead, nearly every team had cap room, and the market had far more money than talent.<\/p>\n While the Warriors made out \u2014 the spike is the biggest reason they could sign Kevin Durant<\/a> \u2014 most teams left that free agency bender with brutal salary cap hangovers.<\/p>\n My Grizzlies, where I was vice president of basketball operations from 2012 to 2019, gave max deals to Mike Conley (OK!) and Chandler Parsons (Yikes!), while bidding wars erupted around the league for far lesser talents. Timofey Mozgov, Evan Turner, Allen Crabbe, Ian Mahinmi, Kent Bazemore, Solomon Hill, Miles Plumlee, Tyler Johnson, Bismack Biyombo, Ryan Anderson and the end-of-the-line versions of Luol Deng and Joakim Noah all signed deals worth $50 million or more \u2026 and this was in 2016! \u2014 Hollinger<\/p>\n 14. Rozier, Billups arrested; Jontay Porter banned<\/p>\n Nothing encapsulated the moral and business morass the NBA and other leagues now find themselves in with sports gambling more than the indictments filed by the Department of Justice one October morning this fall.<\/p>\n Federal prosecutors charged Heat guard Terry Rozier with taking himself out early of a game so that he could help a syndicate of sports bettors win on his prop bets.<\/p>\n It came less than two years after Jontay Porter, who was banned by the NBA in April 2024, admitted to doing something similar<\/a> with some of the same people indicted alongside Rozier.<\/p>\n To boot, Chauncey Billups was charged in a rigged poker game ring that intersected with an alleged illegal sports gambling scheme. It was headline news across the world, and it put the NBA in an uncomfortable Venn diagram with sports gambling and the mafia, surely a grouping they want to avoid.<\/p>\n The federal indictments will likely force a reckoning about the NBA\u2019s affiliation with sports gambling companies and how it impacts the sport. The results of the investigation and of the criminal case remain to be seen, but it has already rocked the league. \u2014 Mike Vorkunov<\/p>\n 15. Kawhi Leonard\/LA Clippers Aspiration scandal<\/p>\n Everyone likes a scandal, and this one has everything; a taciturn and mysterious star; one of the world\u2019s richest men; a company caught in the middle of a bankruptcy proceeding; and a founder who pled guilty to fraud.<\/p>\n Right at the heart of that: Did they all conspire to break one of the NBA\u2019s most sanctified rules<\/a>?<\/p>\n The Kawhi Leonard-Clippers-Aspiration-Steve Ballmer affair has been tabloid fodder since the moment it was first reported by the Pablo Torre Finds Out podcast, and every new turn and morsel of information has been quickly digested and debated.<\/p>\n It is almost perfect for this era, a true crime podcast with a multi-billion dollar company in the middle and very high NBA (but small real-life) stakes. It\u2019s the sports world\u2019s favorite mystery. \u2013 Vorkunov<\/p>\n 16. Hurricane Katrina sends Hornets to OKC<\/p>\n The NBA had to scramble. The 2005-06 season was set to tip off in roughly two months, and the New Orleans Hornets had nowhere to play.<\/p>\n The area surrounding the Hornets\u2019 home arena was completely flooded, as Hurricane Katrina devastated the city on August 29, 2005, killing nearly 1,400 people<\/a> and destroying or damaging more than 200,000 800,00 homes<\/a>.<\/p>\n David Stern and Oklahoma City mayor Mick Cornett quickly sprang into action to temporarily relocate the Hornets to OKC<\/a>, since the city had an arena capable of hosting NBA games despite not having a major professional team. Local fans embraced the newly minted New Orleans\/Oklahoma City Hornets, and a young point guard named Chris Paul even won 2006 Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n A couple years later (see our No. 9), OKC had a team of its own. \u2014 Mirin Fader<\/p>\n 17. Colangelo burner account scandal<\/p>\n This is the kind of social media-driven saga that feels like it could only happen in the NBA.<\/p>\n Philadelphia 76ers GM Bryan Colangelo resigned in June 2018<\/a> after admitting that his wife started several \u201cburner\u201d accounts on the app formerly known as Twitter to defend her husband. Some of the accounts also criticized active and former 76ers players and former GM Sam Hinkie, leading many to believe that Colangelo was doing at least some of the tweeting himself.<\/p>\n The salacious story came to light thanks to reporting from The Ringer<\/a>, which connected the dots from the accounts back to the Colangelos. It was an ignominious end for Colangelo, who took over the Sixers front office after Hinkie resigned.<\/p>\n At that time, Colangelo was brought in by his father, Jerry, to help \u201crescue\u201d the franchise from Hinkie\u2019s oft-criticized strategy of tanking for draft picks to rebuild, dubbed \u201cThe Process.\u201d In the end, the supposed savior had to resign in disgrace and has never worked in the NBA again. \u2014 Jon Krawczynski<\/p>\n 18. Kings remain in Sacramento<\/p>\n 500 David J. Stern Walk: The address in Sacramento is the culmination of passion from an underdog city and fans.<\/p>\n The Maloof family purchased the Kings in 1998 and went on a run of success that hadn\u2019t been seen there before, culminating with reaching the 2002 Western Conference finals.<\/p>\n But by 2010, finances were strained and the Maloofs began looking at other cities. Anaheim was an option, but the Maloofs would eventually focus on an ownership group in Seattle. Mayor Kevin Johnson and Kings fans fought to keep the team.<\/p>\n With Commissioner Stern as an ally, a local ownership group led by Vivek Ranadive, then a minority owner with Golden State, emerged to keep the Kings in Sacramento after it appeared their departure was inevitable. The street sign for 500 David J. Stern Walk is a reminder that he and the city never gave up on keeping the team where it was.\u00a0 \u2014 Jason Jones<\/p>\n 19. Jerry Colangelo named director of USA Basketball<\/p>\n USA men\u2019s Basketball had dominated internationally since professional NBA players were allowed to participate in the 1992 Olympics.<\/p>\n Then, in 2004, Team USA sent a bunch of big names to Athens \u2014 only to get humbled with the bronze medal, sending a shock through the program. In most cases, a bronze would be a great honor. For Team USA, it was nothing but shame.<\/p>\n Jerry Colangelo took over operations after that, and decided to build a team the right way. He got the best commitments for 2008, led by Kobe Bryant, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Carmelo Anthony and many more stars. They won their five group play games by a total of 161 points.<\/p>\n They smacked Australia and then Argentina (the 2004 gold medalists) to find themselves in a showdown against Spain. And while the gold medal game wasn\u2019t a blowout, it reminded the world which country runs men\u2019s basketball when they want to and the US men\u2019s team have won five consecutive gold medals. It was the revival of a program that shouldn\u2019t have needed reviving. \u2014 Harper<\/p>\n 20. The Process begins in Philly<\/p>\n Tanking was nothing new in the NBA until someone did it loudly and openly. Suddenly, it was a buzzword that defied the competitive nature of the NBA.<\/p>\n In May 2013, the Philadelphia 76ers hired Sam Hinkie from the Daryl Morey tree of analytics and atypical roster construction. Immediately, it was obvious the Sixers weren\u2019t interested in winning anything other than lotteries.<\/p>\n They put together intentionally subpar rosters, slapped a \u201cdevelopment\u201d sticker on it and watched the losses pile up \u2014 all in the name of amassing ping pong balls for the lottery.<\/p>\n Eventually, it netted Joel Embiid in 2014, Jahlil Okafor in 2015, Ben Simmons in 2016 and Markelle Fultz in 2017, all top-three picks. Go get a potential star in the draft and wait for the process to turn into wins.<\/p>\n Hinkie wouldn\u2019t make it past April of 2016<\/a>, as the Colangelos took over at the behest of the NBA. To this day, there are still plenty of people who \u201cTrust the Process.\u201d Unfortunately, the Process has still failed to yield even a conference finals appearance. \u2014 Harper<\/p>\n 21. Bucks walkout before Bubble playoff game<\/p>\n In July of 2020, NBA players made their way to Disney World outside of Orlando, Fla. to enter The Bubble. There, they were to resume the 2019-20 NBA season that had been postponed because of the global COVID-19 pandemic. When the season continued, the 22 teams in playoff contention finished the regular season and then the playoffs got underway.<\/p>\n On Aug. 26, the Milwaukee Bucks, up 3-1 in their first-round series against the Orlando Magic, refused to emerge from their locker room for Game 5.<\/p>\n The Bucks remained in their locker room as a response to the police shooting of Jacob Blake<\/a> \u2014 a Black man in Kenosha, Wis., just 45 minutes away from Milwaukee. The team\u2019s protest ultimately led to the NBA postponing the rest of that day\u2019s games and the WNBA, Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer following suit in their respective leagues.<\/p>\n The NBA remained at a standstill as the players tried to figure out their next move and the best way to support the various social movements, including Black Lives Matter, that were evolving throughout the United States.<\/p>\n Three days later, the players would resume the NBA playoffs, but one of the lasting memories of the NBA bubble will be the social activism of players that reached a head with the Bucks\u2019 walkout<\/a>. \u2014\u00a0Eric Nehm<\/p>\n 22. David Stern retires, Adam Silver takes over<\/p>\n For all of his faults and personality traits, David Stern was one of the best commissioners in the history of sports. Not just the NBA. He globalized in the game that took it away from tape delays and drug scandals to corporations paying billions of dollars to broadcast it.<\/p>\n His impact may be unparalleled. But his harsh demeanor didn\u2019t quite fit in a softening, social media age. Adam Silver, his deputy commissioner, was unanimously tabbed as his successor to take over on Feb. 1, 2014.<\/p>\n Immediately, Silver was thought of as a players\u2019 commissioner with a refreshing approach. Since then, he\u2019s been lauded for booting Donald Sterling out of the league and criticized for being too soft<\/a> on issues that could benefit from more structure and a stricter ruling hand. And the current collective bargaining agreement and era of parity<\/a> is often criticized as potentially detrimental to the NBA.<\/p>\n With all that, Silver just agreed to a $76 billion broadcast deal that bridges traditional and digital streaming media. Ultimately, the financial health of the league is the trump card. \u2014 Harper<\/p>\n 23. Dallas Mavericks\u2019 workplace sexual harassment scandal<\/p>\n An awful work environment for the Dallas Mavericks\u2019 female employees was allowed to fester for nearly two decades. In 2018, Sports Illustrated broke the news<\/a> about a corporate culture in Dallas \u201crife with misogyny and predatory sexual behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n The piece alleged that former CEO Terdema Ussery was a serial sexual harasser; that a sales account executive had viewed porn at work with no repercussions; and that a content writer for the team had been arrested for assault at the Mavericks practice facility, pled guilty, and still been allowed to keep his job.<\/p>\n An independent NBA investigation, which included interviews with 215 current and team employees, corroborated these findings<\/a>. Then-majority owner Mark Cuban agreed to donate $10 million to organizations supporting women working in sports and combatting domestic violence. He also hired Cynt Marshall to run the Mavericks\u2019 business arm. She became the first female Black CEO in NBA history. \u2014 Christian Clark<\/p>\n 24. The 2023 CBA and the \u201csecond apron\u201d<\/p>\n Ever since Danny Ainge acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to play with Paul Pierce in 2007, executives \u2014 and sometimes, the players themselves \u2014 tried to form multi-star \u201csuperteams.\u201d Even costly luxury-tax penalties couldn\u2019t stop the league\u2019s richest owners, such as the Clippers\u2019 Steve Ballmer and the Warriors\u2019 Joe Lacob, from spending more aggressively than the league\u2019s other owners claimed to be capable of doing.<\/p>\n Unable to get a true hard salary cap, the NBA pushed for the next-stiffest measure in CBA negotiations: team-building penalties for the most egregious spenders. In avoiding a lockout, the league got the oft-mentioned but rarely understood \u201csecond apron.\u201d If teams exceeded a certain total roster cost above the cap, not only would they face increasing financial penalties, but also restrictions such as the freezing of future draft picks, limitations on the capacity to make trades and the loss of the \u201cmidlevel exception.\u201d<\/p>\n In the summer of 2025, teams of varying qualities made trades that lowered their overall talent, all to cut salary. The Boston Celtics, who won a title the previous year, were among them. \u2014 Eric Koreen<\/p>\n 25. DeAndre Jordan\u2019s free-agent \u201chostage\u201d situation<\/p>\n It seemed like LA Clippers center DeAndre Jordan would be headed to the Dallas Mavericks in free agency in 2015, the first key defection from \u201cLob City.\u201d But before the deal could be made official, Clippers stakeholders like Steve Ballmer, Doc Rivers, Chris Paul, Blake Griffin, Paul Pierce and JJ Redick all went to Jordan\u2019s house in Houston to try to convince him to change his mind.<\/p>\n The events played out on social media, with players tweeting different emojis signaling the ways they were swarming the house (Redick tweeted a car, Griffin, a helicopter<\/a> and Chandler Parsons, a plane<\/a>). Griffin sent an all-time NBA tweet, posting a photo of a chair rammed underneath a door handle with the caption: \u201cDon\u2019t agree with the furniture layout but I\u2019m not an interior designer.\u201d<\/p>\n Don\u2019t agree with the furniture layout but I\u2019m not an interior designer. pic.twitter.com\/23PNgQB88z<\/a><\/p>\n \u2014 Blake Griffin (@blakegriffin23) July 9, 2015<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n The result \u2014 Jordan remaining a Clipper \u2014 was less memorable than its real-time documentation. \u2014 Woike<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/251113-Gilbert-Arenas-scaled-e1763030566216.jpg\")
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