The 25 biggest NBA stories of the 2010s

LeBron James’ exit from Cleveland didn’t exactly go smoothly. He crashed out of the playoffs against Boston in the second round and then became a national villain when he announced his departure to Miami and team up with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh on a televised special called The Decision. It wasn’t the first NBA superteam – the Celtics paired Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett with Paul Pierce just three years previously – but it did signal the start of the player empowerment era, where superstars had the willingness and the leverage to switch teams. It ended up being a great move for LeBron’s career, leading to two titles (though not seven), and when he switched teams again four years later, Cleveland totally forgave him. If only they could un-burn those jerseys!

Michael Jordan's Bulls went 72-10 in the 1995-96 season, a record that seemed absolutely unbreakable until the Warriors did it. They started the season 24-0, never lost consecutive games, and Steph Curry became the first player to make more than 400 threes on his way to a unanimous MVP selection. In an era of load management and rest, the Warriors brought back the integrity of the regular season and made every game appointment viewing. And after what happened in the NBA Finals, no team will ever make a run at this record again.

The magical 2015-16 season came to a screeching halt for the Warriors in the final three games of the NBA Finals. After winning three of the first four games, a few things happened for the Warriors. First, Draymond Green got suspended for Game Five after a postseason full of hitting and kicking people in the groin. Then LeBron James and Kyrie Irving really woke up, pouring in a combined 199 points in the final three games. They locked down Game 7 with defense, including LeBron's chasedown block and Kevin Love stonewalling Steph Curry one-on-one. Cleveland won its first title, the internet made 3-1 lead jokes for a full year, and perhaps the karmic backlash led to the Cleveland Indians blowing their own 3-1 lead in the World Series that fall.

An otherwise unremarkable New York Knicks season became anything but when an otherwise unremarkable player named Jeremy Lin became a sensation. Lin was a second-year player out of Harvard who'd played 55 minutes all season before finally getting some run on Feb. 4, 2012. All he did was score 25 points, along with seven assists and five rebounds, and the Knicks started winning. They won seven in a row while Lin became a national sensation, the first great Asian-American player the NBA has ever seen, and one who dropped 38 on Kobe and the Lakers. Linsanity ended prematurely when Carmelo Anthony returned from injury, coach Mike D'Antoni resigned and Lin tore his meniscus. Lin left for the Rockets in the summer, in part because some of the team's veterans were jealous of his success and in part because the Knicks ruin absolutely everything.

Just before the start of the lockout-delayed 2011-12 season, the Lakers struck a deal to acquire disgruntled New Orleans point guard Chris Paul to play alongside Kobe Bryant. But after unhappy owners complained — Cavs owner Dan Gilbert demanded the league owners vote on the deal, as they temporarily owned the team – commissioner David Stern rejected the deal. It's still unclear what Stern's reasons were, but it was likely to save face after the lockout, which was inspired by small-market teams' fears of losing star players to bigger teams. Of course, one week later Paul was traded to a team in the exact same city, and turned the Clippers into a perennial contender, while the Lakers lost in the second round in Kobe's final playoff appearance.

One year after their trade for an All-Star point guard was rejected, the Lakers pulled off a deal for Steve Nash. They also brought in Dwight Howard in a four-team, 12-player move. The new-look Lakers had a starting lineup with 33 combined All-Star appearances, three MVPs and four Defensive Player of the Year Awards, but it didn't work out. Nash and Howard both battled injuries, as did coach Mike D'Antoni, the team's third head coach of the season. Kobe clashed with Dwight , the defense was bad and Pau Gasol struggled to get touches alongside another dominant big man. After Kobe tore his Achilles at the end of the season, the team was swept out of the playoffs and still hasn't returned.

Before the 2010-11 season, Mavericks guard Jason Terry got a tattoo  of the Larry O'Brien Trophy on his arm from DeShawn Stevenson's personal tattoo artist. This shocking bit of swagger was rewarded when the Mavericks, underdogs in all four of their playoff series, knocked off the Miami Heat in the Finals. It was a validation of Dirk Nowitzki, who finally won a title and avenged his loss to Miami in the 2006 Finals (and LeBron and Wade's mockery ). It gave a plethora of veterans their first rings, including Terry, Shawn Marion, Jason Kidd, Tyson Chandler, Peja Stojakovic and even Brian Cardinal. 

In 2013, Jason Collins came out as gay in an editorial, becoming the first openly gay male athlete in a major professional sport. Collins was a free agent at the time but later played 22 games with the Nets, coached by his old teammate Jason Kidd. The NBA has been the sports league most welcoming to gay athletes, though there is still a long way to go. Referee Bill Kennedy came out after Rajon Rondo used a gay slur against him, and Kobe Bryant was fined $100,000 after using a gay slur in 2011. Still, it's been a big decade for coming out, as Violet Palmer went public with her sexuality, as did current Warriors president Rick Welts, the first openly gay sports executive in the big four sports.

The Oklahoma City Thunder lost in the Finals in 2012 but looked like a dynasty in the making. Their core of Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden and Serge Ibaka were all under the age of 24. KD and Russ had already made five combined All-Star teams, Harden had just won Sixth Man of the Year and Ibaka was on the All-Defensive first team. But when Harden was eligible for an extension, the Thunder balked at paying him the $60 million over four years that he wanted (they offered $52), and traded him to Houston. For that $2 million per year, OKC lost a future MVP and their chance at any championship, much less the multiple titles that looked likely in 2013. Jeremy Lamb and Kevin Martin never panned out, one pick turned into Mitch McGary, and while Steven Adams is a fine player, he's not The Beard. This might have been the worst trade of the decade, only rivaled by Danny Ainge's outright heist of the Nets.

The Harden trade was a disaster, but at least you could see the logic when it happened — replace Harden with multiple players, plus a lottery pick. It’s hard to know what Brooklyn was thinking when it sent Boston three future first-round picks and a pick swap to get 36-year-old Paul Pierce and 37-year-old Kevin Garnett in 2013. The Nets wanted to pair the two with Deron Williams, Brook Lopez and future BIG3 MVP Joe Johnson to form what would have been a superteam in 2009 and brought in Jason Kidd to coach them. But Lopez broke his foot, Garnett missed 28 games and the team actually got worse by five wins. Garnett and Pierce lost to LeBron in the playoffs one final time before Pierce left in free agency. Four years later, the Nets were still sending lottery picks to Boston. The total haul included Jaylen Brown, Jayson Tatum and a pick (Collin Sexton) the Celtics turned into Kyrie Irving. 

Paul George's Indiana Pacers took the champion Miami to seven games in the 2013 conference finals, and they were confident that 2014 was their year — so confident that the starting lineup posed for a GQ Magazine photo shoot, resulting in  this cursed picture , where the squad looked like an aging boy band. They were 42-13 before the issues came out and 14-13 the rest of the way, with the locker room falling apart as well – Lance Stephenson fought Evan Turner, and Roy Hibbert said the team had a lot of  "selfish dudes." After limping into the playoffs, they barely got past the Hawks and Wizards before getting crushed by the Heat for the third straight year. That summer the curse continued when Paul George broke his leg playing for Team USA, and this edition of the Pacers was done. They wouldn't lose to LeBron in the playoffs again for three more years.

The 2013 Heat may have been a superteam, but they had their hands full with the Spurs. San Antonio was leading Game 6 by 12 late in the third quarter and sat on the brink of eliminating Miami. The Heat came back and even retook the lead, but with 28 seconds left they trailed by five, and the crowd started leaving . LeBron hit a three, Kawhi missed a free throw, and with 7.9 seconds left LeBron took a game-tying three — and missed. But Chris Bosh corralled the rebound and kicked in to Ray Allen, who backpedaled and sunk the biggest three-pointer in NBA history. Bosh blocked two shots in the final minutes of OT, the Heat won and then held on in Game 7 to take home the title.

The 2014 first-round series between the Warriors and Clippers was already intense before TMZ got involved. Between Games 3 and 4, TMZ released audio of Clippers owner Donald Sterling making racist remarks to his mistress. This was the final straw for the NBA and Sterling, who’d already paid multimillion dollar settlements for housing discrimination based on race, heckling his own players and regularly suing his former coaches. The Clippers nearly boycotted Game 4, instead wearing their warm-ups inside-out to obscure any team logo, and five days later, commissioner Adam Silver announced Sterling had been fined $2.5 million and banned from the NBA for life. One month later, the team was sold to Steve Ballmer.

Teams have certainly tanked for draft picks before, but no team has outright given up for multiple seasons to the degree that the 76ers have. With "The Process," GM Sam Hinkie relentlessly traded veterans, picked up extra draft picks and led Philadelphia to historic futility. Things paid off, but not until after a lot of misery: Two of the high picks Philly got were total busts, in Nerlens Noel and Jahlil Okafor. Michael Carter-Williams won Rookie of the Year; Hinkie traded him a year later. In fact, three top picks sat out their entire rookie seasons. Hinkie eventually got fired, but now the Sixers have Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons and they’ve finally achieved their destiny: losing in the second round of the playoffs.

After four years with “The Heatles” in Miami, LeBron James decided to come home to Cleveland. This time, instead of a television special, he opted with a personal essay in Sports Illustrated, written with the king of NBA essays, Lee Jenkins. LeBron was actually editing the essay on a flight to Miami next to teammate Dwyane Wade, before calling to tell him the next day. With 2011 top pick Kyrie Irving still in place, Cleveland traded 2014 top pick Andrew Wiggins for Kevin Love later that summer, and LeBron had a new Big Three in Northeast Ohio. While he only won one title, that one title was huge, and he went to the Finals for all four years of his return. Meanwhile the Heat kept Wade and Bosh, but things fell apart when Bosh developed career-ending blood clots.

It’s truly difficult to choose between James Dolan’s misdeeds in the last decade as Knicks owner. Giving Phil Jackson $60 million to run the team into the ground? Cussing out a season ticket holder? Signing Carmelo Anthony to a max contract and then running him out of town? Recording a song about his friend Harvey Weinstein with his terrible band, JD & The Straight Shot? We’re going to go with the time he kicked out beloved franchise icon Charles Oakley and had him arrested just for criticizing him. It showed the contempt Dolan has for his players, the Knicks fans and basketball itself. The Knicks will end the decade like they started: in last place and firing their coach.

On paper, Jimmy Butler to Minnesota made all kinds of sense. It reunited Butler with coach Tom Thibodeau and brought defensive toughness and leadership to Andrew Wiggins and Karl-Anthony Towns. The cost was dunk champ Zach Lavine, young point guard Kris Dunn and the No. 7 pick in the draft (Lauri Markkanen). Although there was tension in the first year, some centered around the young Wolves’ love of late-night video games, Minnesota made the playoffs for the first time in 14 years, which is longer than the lifespan of an actual timber wolf. But things fell apart that summer, with Butler going public with his unhappiness and rumors of infidelity with Towns’ girlfriend. The last straw was Butler screaming at his teammates, coaches and team executives at a crazy practice. Eventually the Wolves dealt Butler to the 76ers, where he also didn’t quite get along with his young teammates, and he absconded to Miami in the summer. 

Over the last decade, the Clippers had a lineup with All-NBA, All-Defensive team guard Chris Paul, All-NBA forward Blake Griffin and All-NBA center DeAndre Jordan, supported by Jamal Crawford, who won two Sixth Man of the Year Awards in L.A. Despite this abundance of talent, they never went further than the second round of the playoffs due to series of injuries and blunders. In 2013, the Clippers won 56 games but lost in the first round to Memphis after Griffin sprained his ankle and CP3 got ejected from the elimination Game 6. In 2014 they melted down in Game 5 against the Thunder, with Paul turning the ball over twice in the final 17 seconds. In 2015 they had Houston on the brink of elimination in Game 6, leading by 19 late in the third quarter, before falling apart to a James Harden-less lineup, eventually losing by 12 points. They lost by 13 in Game 7. In 2016 Griffin injured his quad tendon and Paul broke his hand against Portland, and they lost in six games. In 2017 it was Griffin’s toe that knocked him out of the first-round series against the Jazz, a loss in seven games. After six years of heartbreak, Paul engineered a trade to Houston, and within a year, Griffin, Jordan, Crawford, and J.J. Redick were all gone as well.

The NBA adopted the three-point shot in 1979, but it took over three decades for the NBA to catch up to the idea that three points were more than two. Aside from a three-year aberration with a short three-point line from 1994-97, guys weren't putting it up from deep consistently until Steph Curry managed to shoot 45 percent on 600 attempts in 2012-13. He did that on nearly 900 attempts in 2015-16, winning his second straight MVP Award and permanently changing how NBA teams play offense. Last year 38 players made more three-pointers than Michael Jordan's first title team — the whole team. Last year's top three-point shooting team, the Rockets, made 1,323 three-pointers, a 57 percent increase over 2009-10's top team, the Orlando Magic, and the outside shooting revolution shows no signs of abating.

There had never been an NBA player who won a championship 15 years after his first title before Tim Duncan did it in 2014, and he did it with the same coach as he did the first time. After 2007, Duncan, Gregg Popovich and the rest of the Spurs kept falling short in the postseason, most heartbreakingly so in the 2013 Finals. But instead of being devastated, the defeat motivated the team, bonding the players together and leading them to an absolute stomping of the Heat in the 2014 Finals. Apart from Bill Russell and John Havlicek, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili had the second-longest gap between titles with the same team, with 11 years between their wins in 2003 and 2014. But the Duncan-Pop bond is truly unique in NBA history, and now Duncan’s on the Spurs' coaching staff! 

Dwight Howard had a ton of success in Orlando, winning multiple Defensive Player of the Year Awards and going to the Finals in 2009. But he’d soured on Orlando by then, requesting a trade and trying to get coach Stan Van Gundy fired behind the scenes, culminating in an awkward on-camera interview that doubled as a viral commercial for Diet Pepsi. Orlando had a deal in place to send Howard to Brooklyn in March of 2012, but Howard scotched it by opting in to his 2012-13 deal. Why? Because the Magic CEO brought over “all [his] favorite food and candies”. Even for a guy who used to eat 24 candy bars a day, that’s crazy logic. Howard’s new relationship with Orlando lasted all of three months, after which he was traded to Los Angeles.

Plenty of players have made burner accounts for social media, notably Kevin Durant, but it wasn’t something team executives usually did. In 2017 someone tipped off The Ringer that then-Sixers GM Bryan Colangelo had been operating as many as five different secret Twitter accounts, which disclosed private team information, criticized Sixers players like Joel Embiid and Nerlens Noel and questioned decisions by Philly’s coaching staff as well as Colangelo’s predecessor, Sam Hinkie. It also defended Colangelo’s fashion, shooting back at a critique of his shirts with, “That is a normal collar. Move on, find a new slant.” Eventually Colangelo’s wife, Barbara Bottini, admitted to creating and operating the accounts, and Colangelo resigned from the team.

It never would have happened if it weren’t for the NBA’s lucrative TV deal, which made the salary cap go up from $70 million to $94 million, but in 2016 superstar Kevin Durant left the Oklahoma City Thunder for the 73-win Golden State Warriors. A lot of factors went into the decision, which various Warriors had been dreaming about since Steph Curry and Andre Iguodala started going to chapel together during the 2010 FIBA tournament. KD was sick of playing with Westbrook, wanted a title to legitimize his status as (maybe) the NBA’s best player and wanted to play in the Warriors' egalitarian offense. But also, he wanted rings, which is exactly what he got in 2017 and 2018, along with back-to-back Finals MVPs. His Achilles tear (and Klay Thompson’s ACL tear in the next game) derailed the dream of a three-peat, but while it lasted, the KD Warriors were probably the greatest offensive team in NBA history.

There have been top picks who washed out in the NBA before, most recently 2013 No. 1 Anthony Bennett, who suffered from sleep apnea and asthma and played only 151 games (and less than 2,000 minutes) in his brief NBA career. But no one was quite as baffling as Markelle Fultz, who got to the NBA in 2017 and seemingly forgot how to shoot. The 76ers traded up to get him, giving Boston the No. 3 pick (Jayson Tatum) and a future first-rounder, which increased the pressure on Fultz to contribute to the Philly squad with championship aspirations. Eventually Fultz was diagnosed with thoracic outlet syndrome, but by then the Sixers had soured on him and shipped him off to Orlando, where he seems to have somewhat regained his shot in 2019.

For two decades, the San Antonio Spurs were the model of doing things the right way. But when Kawhi Leonard suffered a mysterious quad injury in 2017, the Spurs did everything wrong. They misdiagnosed the injury, alienated Kawhi and eventually things got so bad they had to trade him to Toronto. All the Board Man did there was lead the Raptors to Canada's first NBA title, winning his second Finals MVP in the process. Then in the summer, he signed with the Clippers and snatched Paul George away from Oklahoma City to be his sidekick. He also ignited an ongoing debate about player rest, or "load management" and debuted the NBA's weirdest laugh. He's a fun guy!

This is not the most significant NBA story of the decade — only the most hilarious one. In 2015, DeAndre Jordan verbally committed to a four-year, $80 million deal with the Mavericks but then had second thoughts. Because of the free agent moratorium, he couldn't officially sign with Dallas for 10 days (the NBA reduced the waiting period a year later), and the madness began. When rumors started flying that Jordan might change his mind, Chandler Parsons, who'd aggressively recruited DeAndre, tweeted a plane emoji to indicate he was flying to Houston. Then everyone else involved started tweeting transportation emojis: Blake Girffin posted a helicopter, Chris Paul tweeted a banana and a boat and Paul Pierce posted a photo of an emoji. The Clippers eventually went to DeAndre's house to guard him until he could eventually sign at midnight. DeAndre stayed in L.A., and the Mavs settled for Zaza Pachulia and Deron Williams in free agency. Eventually Jordan did sign in Dallas in 2018 — and got traded to the Knicks midseason.