Why do NBA players switch teams so often?

why do people switch jobs so often?

Because they don't want to end up like Damien Lilliard who, although making piles of $$$, is with a crappy organization destined to be near the bottom.

Trades and free agency blockbusters have made the league more interesting for most fans, therefore the league desires big moves in free agency and trades. They are a business first and foremost which intends to have more parity and less predictability.

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Any questions?

Like the Coach off of "Bluechips" said..........................................God***n Money!

Obviously

Michael did not play on the same team his whole career. Magic's career was cut short, but he started with the most desirable team to players, so likely he would have stayed.

The top 6-7 and 11 of the top 15 players in the MVP rankings this year have spent their whole careers so far with one team. There are some players who have moved around a lot, most notably LeBron, but don't know that it's that quite as common as you make it out to be.

Quite the opposite. Players can almost always make more money by staying with the same team. The CBA is set up that way. Giannis would have made like $70 million less if he had signed with another team.

They might think they can enhance their brand, which may lead to more endorsement money, but even for UFAs it's almost never solely about money.

That would be a good study.

Do NBA players change jobs more than the average worker

As a poor, average guy, my questions is: How much money do you really need. If someone gave me, say, $10 million a year to teach (yes, I'm an underpaid teacher) I would work for one year and be set for life.

These guys are getting more for a longer period of time. I guess greed is a more apt answer.

And, this is kind of relevant:

I was once offered much more money than I'll eve make as a teacher to be the head coach of a D1 Track and Cross Country program.

I loved my job and didn't want to relocate my family (2 small kids at the time) just for money. My kids, as grown ups, have thanked me for the stability I chose.

Ya think the billionaire owners are paying our big money out of altruism?

They are doing so because it allows them to make far more $$ than the richest players and because the players have a union and so some power.

The real greed is among the billionaire owners

I mean, imagine being drafted for your job...you have to live in the city that you are drafted to. You don't have a say. I'd say quite a few people would want to leave the second they get the chance. These players have lives outside of playing, too, so while money and a chance to win are parts of why people leave, being in a city they want to be in is a large part, too. And I don't think top players move around all that much. People make a huge deal out of LeBron, but he's played for 3 organizations in 19 years. I guarantee the average person has switched jobs many more times than that in 19 years.

It’s happening in all the major sports more recently.

The NFL has had 6 high profile QBs change teams so far this year.

Russell Wilson - Seahawks to Broncos

Deshaun Watson - Texans to Browns

Carson Wentz- Colts to Washington

Matt Ryan - Falcons to Colts

Marcus Mariota - Raiders to Falcons (after being on the Titans)

Mitchell Trubisky - Bills to Steelers (after being with the Bears)

Baker Mayfield will be with some new team next year. So will Nick Foles.

Last year Stafford and Goff switched teams and then Stafford won the super Bowl with the Rams

The year before that, Brady went from the Patriots to the Bucs and won the Super Bowl

Manning went from the Colts to the Broncos and won a Super not long ago to start this trend

Baseball players change teams frequently, too.

I don’t think it’s money.
Players and teams are chasing championships.

Players leaving in free agency are searching for good teammate matchups where they can win. They even force trades to go to teams they want to play for.

And teams are generally impatient.
After every season they make moves to improve. And obviously that backfires half the time.

The Sixers last won it all in 1983.
Since then they tried to build a team around Charles Barkley and Allen Iverson that didn’t work out.
They had a good team in 2012 with Andre Iguodala but blew that team up, trading him and then losing on purpose for four years to get Embiid and Simmons.
Iguodala won a championship MVP with Golden State while the Sixers haven’t made it past the second round and dumped Simmons last year.

Never works that way. It's competition. All the time players are getting offended because they're making on $20 million a year and some guy who is not as good is getting more.

I'm not in that world and I don't get it, but everyone wants more.

Don't know that it's greed exactly. It's not like if they don't take it that the money goes to feed starving babies. In fact, if they want to feed starving babies, they should take as much as they can get and give it to feed starving babies.

I don't begrudge them wanting more. But again, back to the moving around issue, you get more money to stay put. They can whine and demand a trade, like Harden, and switch teams while being on the same contract, but in the NBA (NFL is different) they're usually* taking less money to move to other teams. The players who stay on the same team are the greedy ones if you want to go there.

*see RFA vs UFA

It's just business. Each player and organization has to do what's best for them.

A player is trying to get paid as much as possible, like going to a team where they can play more minutes and get more stats or gain more exposure in a bigger market.

An organization is trying to win and they have to trade/draft/sign players to build the best team that meshes well together, which is easier said than done with all their egos. And this must be done within a salary cap.

The league actually encourages players to stay with their original team come free agency by allowing larger max contracts than what another team can offer. What ends up happening is that the player signs the deal and the team realizes they overpaid and can't afford to sign more pieces. Once the max deal is signed, the player gets complacent and regresses year after year. Looking at Westbrook. Giannis/Curry are rare exceptions.

Some of those were trades so the player was not making a choice. (Players may have requested a trade and have no-trade clauses that means they cannot be traded to a team without consent.)

In some cases players get cut so they are switching teams not of their choosing.

There are a couple reasons:

- Chasing championships. Since the Heat added Bosh and LeBron 12 years ago there has been a trend towards creating "superteams" where superstars try to get on the same team with another superstar they like.

- Player empowerment. These days when a player isn't happy about their situation they demand a trade and pout until it happens. James Harden has done this twice in recent years. You didn't see this (or at least to the same extent) up until a few years ago when it really shifted towards a players-first league and this started happening more

- I also think part of it is just the guys who happen to be superstars right now. Harden, Kyrie, Durant, and Westbrook are all super petty and difficult teammates to play with. This makes them change teams more often, whereas a new crop of players will likely have less drama and fewer moves.

- Teams have gotten smarter and are more hesitant to give max $$ to an aging player, or will look at ways to move them as that risk is increasing.

The Warriors core 3 is still the same and Curry will probably retire with GS. Giannis passed up a chance to leave Milwaukee and doesn't look to be leaving any time soon.