July 31, 2025
The two business partners reportedly met with the European agent of Nikola Jokić, Miško Ražnatović, to discuss forming a new league.
A recent social media post featuring LeBron James, his business partner, Maverick Carter, and the European agent of superstar center Nikola Jokić, Miško Ražnatović, chilling on a boat, is (re)spurring a rumor that a new basketball league is being developed.
Ražnatović posted the photograph of the three of them: “The summer of 2025 is the perfect time to make big plans for the fall of 2026!”
Front Office Sports reported that the conversation centered around the formation of an international basketball league. There have been reports that a group of investors is seeking to raise $5 billion for the league was being advised by Carter.
Reports of such a league and have been in the news for months.
In January, Bloomberg reported that the league would compete with the NBA. Ite would feature six men’s and six women’s teams playing in eight cities around the world. Teams would stay two weeks in each city, according to sources.
UBS Group AG and Evercore Inc. are on board to help raise the money, along with people like Skype co-founder Geoff Prentice, former Facebook executive Grady Burnett, and the investment firm SC Holdings, which is led by co-founders Jason Stein and Daniel Haimovic.
The Financial Times reported earlier this year that the new league would be patterned after Formula One. The new basketball league is looking to poach NBA players by offering them equity in the league, similar to how the new women’s basketball league, Unrivaled, operates. (Unrivaled, though, does not compete directly against the WNBA.)
No information has come out of Carter’s camp to deny or confirm the meeting between the three heavyweights.
