The mysterious boat meeting last week in France between LeBron James, his business partner Maverick Carter, and Nikola Jokić’s European agent was about the planned international basketball league being spearheaded by Carter, multiple sources tell Front Office Sports.
The photo, posted to Instagram over the weekend by Jokić’s European agent Miško Ražnatović, caused speculation about whether the trio was talking about James joining the Nuggets or Jokić joining the Lakers.
Sources familiar with the situation tell FOS it was not about the Nuggets or Lakers.
Eurohoops.net first reported the Carter-backed league was the “possible reason” for the meeting.
The caption of the post—which listed Saint Tropez, France as its location—teased, “The summer of 2025 is the perfect time to make big plans for the fall of 2026.”
Bloomberg first reported about the upcoming league, writing in January that a group of investors advised by Carter was seeking to raise $5 billion. The league’s plan is to have a touring model with six men’s and six women’s teams playing in eight cities. FOS reported at the time that Carter was spearheading the effort and that James was not a part of it.
Ražnatović is a power player in European basketball. His BeoBasket agency—based in Belgrade, Serbia—has a partnership with Jokić’s American agency, Excel Sports Management, and has represented countless well-known European players, including Clippers center Ivica Zubac.
The upstart league scored funding from investors including the Singapore government, SC Holdings, Riyadh’s Public Investment Fund, UBS, Skype founder Geoff Prentice, and former Facebook executive Grady Burnett, the Financial Times reported in February.
FT also reported that the league expects to be a “full-time” responsibility, unlike the upstart women’s league Unrivaled, where the scheduling allows players to participate in both the new league and the WNBA. That means NBA players would not be able to play in both.
Like Unrivaled, players are expected to receive equity in the Carter-backed league. Current NBA rules bar players from having ownership stakes in teams, a rule Celtics star Jaylen Brown has said he would like to see changed.
Carter’s league has been compared to LIV Golf or Formula One, where teams would play in one city for a week or weekend before moving to another.
The NBA itself is also considering a new league in Europe. Commissioner Adam Silver said in March that the NBA is “ready to go to the next stage” and explore a new league in Europe with FIBA, the global governing body for basketball, as partners. But the NBA would likely have teams in European and U.K. cities, which would be a different format than Carter’s.
Silver and NBA deputy commissioner Mark Tatum met in London on Wednesday with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer as they seek out “potential stakeholders in a new NBA Europe league,” Marc Stein reported on Wednesday. The NBA is taking steps as it explores the new league, including announcing Wednesday that the Grizzlies and Magic will play two regular-season games in Europe in January 2026, one in Berlin and a second in London.
EuroLeague CEO Paulius Motiejūnas is not in favor of a new NBA league. In a Tuesday Q&A with The Athletic, he talked about a meeting held earlier this year between the NBA and the EuroLeague, saying, “We said to them, like we said publicly, we don’t believe that the new league is something that would help the market.”
Ražnatović and Carter did not respond to requests for comment.
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