Lakers star Luka Dončić is part of an investor group headed by former Dallas Mavericks general manager Donnie Nelson that is seeking to bring a team to Rome as part of NBA Europe, three sources told The Athletic.
Nelson, 63, the son of legendary former NBA coach and executive Don Nelson, has a preliminary agreement in place to purchase an existing basketball team from northern Italy, Vanoli Basket Cremona, to potentially set up a much larger play of entering a team into NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s new European league.
Dončić, 26, whom Nelson acquired in a draft-night trade with the Atlanta Hawks 2018, is part of his group of investors, sources in American and European basketball with knowledge of Nelson’s plans told The Athletic. While the Milan-based sports publication La Gazzetta Dello Sport reported that Dirk Nowitzki was also a part of Nelson’s group, his spokesman, Scott Tomlin, said that was not the case. According to one of the sources, Rimas Kaukenas, a Lithuanian legend as a player who was a longtime star in Italy, is also part of the group.
A spokeswoman for Dončić declined to comment and Nelson could not immediately be reached for comment. Vanoli Basket officials did not return a message seeking comment.
Vanoli Basket is a license holder in Liga Basket Seria A, the top Italian pro league, and any team competing in NBA Europe must also play in a domestic league. Multiple sources said Vanoli Basket was being purchased for its Liga license.
With that in hand, those sources said, Nelson, Dončić and their partners would then establish an essentially new franchise about 330 miles away in Rome. Serie A has rules in place that insist a franchise has to wait two years before it can change its name, along with other requirements, according to one Italian basketball source.
Silver has identified Rome and Milan in Italy, London and Manchester in the United Kingdom, Paris and Lyon in France, Madrid and Barcelona in Spain, Berlin and Munich in Germany, and Athens and Istanbul as cities for licensed teams in NBA Europe, which he hopes to launch in September of 2027.
The buy-in for the licenses in NBA Europe is expected to be expensive – The Athletic previously reported Silver is seeking more than $1 billion for a new team that is placed in London – and Rome is both a massive and untapped market, so it is likely Nelson and Dončić have deep-pocketed partners. There is no top division team currently in Rome.
When Silver held a conference for potential participants in NBA Europe last month in London, The Athletic reported that representatives from Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, PIF, RedBird Capital, Lazard, Sixth Street, Blackstone; Arctos, and BC Partners were present. Two investment banks, JP Morgan Chase and the Raine Group, are assisting the NBA in courting investors.
Dončić was born in Slovenia and is a product of the European pipeline Silver is trying to gain more direct access to by starting a new league. Dončić played as a teenager in Real Madrid’s basketball academy, eventually graduating to the organization’s top pro club before being drafted by Nelson and the Mavericks in 2018.
Of the known likely participants in NBA Europe, there is at least one other current NBA star who is an investor in a likely controlling ownership group in the new league. Kevin Durant purchased a minority stake in soccer giant Paris Saint-Germain in 2024. PSG, owned by Qatari Sports Investments, is expected to create a new basketball team for Silver’s league. Durant bought into PSG through Arctos, an American firm that purchased a 12.5 percent stake in PSG in 2024.
Former NBA star Tony Parker owns ASVEL Basket, a team near Lyon that is expected to join NBA Europe, and former star Pau Gasol is considering a leadership post in the new league.
There is no rule for ownership stakes in NBA Europe for current players, but Silver’s office hasn’t finalized rules for the new league and would likely need to engage the players’ union to determine ownership limits for players.
However, owners of teams in the new league cannot own more than 5 percent of an NBA team in the U.S. or Canada, a high-ranking NBA official told The Athletic. The reason: all NBA owners will be stakeholders in the European league; majority ownership of an NBA Europe team on top of that would create conflicts of interest, and a double-dipping scenario that NBA owners without European teams may consider unfair.
In addition to the 12 expected license holders for NBA Europe, which means those teams compete in the NBA-backed international competition each year, there will be four spots available each year for qualification by virtually any pro team in Europe.
Though a set of rules has not yet been drafted, one spot in the NBA Europe annual competition would go to the champion of FIBA’s annual European competition, called the Champions League. The other three spots would be earned through a qualifying tournament set up by FIBA for all the highest-performing teams in various domestic leagues. If, as expected, NBA Europe materializes, FIBA’s qualification competitions would take place in June 2027, international sources said.
The Athletic’s Dan Woike contributed to this story.