In professional sports, athletes can seldom keep to the promise of loyalty. The promise is an oath made when first drafted to stay with the franchise that drafted them, even if the team is revealed to commit malpractice at any point during their career.
In some cases, the promise takes athletes farther than imaginable, to the top of respective conversations and the undisputed best in their craft. Take Stephen Curry: four championships with one team, the Golden State Warriors. Winning a championship defines a legacy.
The downsides start to roll in when one considers what happens after those championships. Many teams opt to retain talent around superstars that win titles with their franchises. Golden State notably tried to do this, though they swung and missed when it came to getting key free agents like Anthony Davis and LeBron James.
Curry was involved in recruiting star players because he, alongside other players, wanted to maximize the last couple of years he had. It’s been hinted that he grew tired of the charade, with the front office hesitant to trade young players for a while.
This offseason continued the post-2022 Warriors’ consistent refusal to add meaningful talent, often resulting in Curry posting amazing stat lines while they drop games. In a league where teams are making moves that make them better or worse, Golden State essentially decided to run the same core back, adding only the players they drafted in this year’s draft.
Damian Lillard’s situation is the same. A decade of loyalty to Portland peaked, in terms of memorability, with a shot over Paul George, then with the Oklahoma City Thunder. That year was the furthest the Trail Blazers had ever gotten in the postseason: the 2019 Western Conference Finals.
Most recently, Giannis Antetokounmpo was traded from Milwaukee after long-standing tensions. The Bucks fell into the same trap the Warriors did with the “two-timeline idea,” where a team collects young talent, often at the expense of the current championship core. Staying in Milwaukee until the roster aged out and the asset chest ran dry proved that unchecked loyalty eventually traps both sides in uncompetitive purgatory. In the modern NBA, leaving often becomes the only merciful move left to let a franchise rebuild.
Front office executives, who are legally responsible for managing salary caps, apron restrictions and asset depreciation, see paying an icon based on sentimentality as a form of corporate malpractice. This is especially true if the player is injured, aging or both, as it conflicts with their fiduciary duties under the collective bargaining agreement. These offices must often put the future before the player in front of them, and it often results in trades that profoundly affect fans and players alike.
Isaiah Thomas played through the death of his sister and sacrificed his hip to get the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals, only to be traded for Kyrie Irving in the same summer. Almost a decade later, the Celtics traded 2024 Finals MVP Jaylen Brown for similar reasons; from an operational perspective, having two players make up near 70% of their payroll would limit flexibility in the future. This mindset is why almost every member of that championship starting 5, save Jayson Tatum and Derrick White, is now gone.
Luka Doncic got the Mavericks to the Finals and was traded because they were unwilling to pay him a supermax, among other things. Blake Griffin had a mock jersey retirement in 2017 and was promised a lifetime with the Clippers; yet six months later, he was traded to Detroit. Chris Paul had this happen twice: once from Houston to Oklahoma City, and again from the Clippers, who released him midseason after a clash in leadership styles, effectively ending his NBA career on that note.
Anti-player as these moves are with context, why do fans dislike it when players jump ship and leave?
Kevin Durant is probably the most infamous example of this –– after blowing a 3-1 lead to the Golden State Warriors, he left Oklahoma to join the latter team in free agency. Fans despised him not necessarily because he left, but because he chose the best basketball environment available, violating the unwritten rule that superstars must suffer alone.
James Harden is infamous for forcing exits via trade demands, intrinsically exposing the transactional nature of the sport. Fans often see that as an insult to the city and the fanbase, rather than a rejection of a front office unsure of its long-term plans or that failed to build a contender.
Jimmy Butler represents the attitude to a T — seen with Chicago, Minnesota and most recently Miami. Reflecting that hostile, transactional nature back onto front offices makes fans deeply uncomfortable, often because of the state the franchises are left in after they leave.
The answer is complicated — a confusing conundrum. While there is no definitive solution, situations like De’Aaron Fox leaving franchises that lack a focus on sustainability are understood more than in the past.
Loyalty is a complicated subject, even more so in the NBA than in other sports. Today, as fan attitudes evolve, aside from some exceptions, players forcing their way out is often seen as a means to an end.