Why we follow a player, not a city

How I got hooked

I owe the NBA to my friend Quentin. He’s the one who sat me down in front of my first games, with the patience of someone who knows they’re going to convert you. But Quentin introduced me to the NBA. He’s not the one who made me love it.

That was Derrick Rose. A Chicago point guard, drafted by his hometown team, who attacked the rim like his life depended on it. In 2011, at 22, he became the youngest MVP in history. A year later, he tore his ACL in the playoffs, and the basketball I loved changed forever. I had no reason to love Chicago. I had Rose.

Then came LeBron James. And with him, a strange emotional geography.

1. The sparkQuentinThe one who sat me down for my first games
2. Love at first sightChicagoDerrick Rose, MVP at 22
3. The common threadClevelandLeBron, at home
4. The common threadMiamiLeBron, and his two titles
5. And thenEtc.Everywhere he went, all the way to Philadelphia this season

I loved Chicago, then Cleveland, then Miami. Not because I had any connection to those cities. Because I had a player, and I followed him.

From France, a city is an abstraction

When you’re American, the team comes before the player. You’re born in a city, you inherit a jersey, you go to games with your dad. Players come and go, the team stays. When I started following the NBA, in France, none of that existed for me.

• In France, games happen in the middle of the night. You often discover them the next morning, in highlights. And a highlight is a player, rarely a team.
• There’s no arena down the street. No stands, no seat neighbours, no pregame ritual. What’s left is the screen, and on the screen, you watch the players.
• A player is a story, a city is an inheritance. A path, a personality, injuries, comebacks: you can get attached without knowing anything about the city. To love a franchise, you need a local history you don’t have.

So following a player when you’re not American isn’t a lack of loyalty. It’s the only door that’s really open.

And from Montreal?

In 2016, I moved to Montreal. On paper, everything should have changed: same time zone as New York, games at dinnertime, NBA cities a few hours’ drive away. Since then, I’ve been to Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Philadelphia, Boston, San Francisco, Cleveland and Detroit.

And yet nothing changed. Montreal doesn’t have an NBA team. The Raptors are in Toronto, a little over five hours’ drive away: close enough to go, too far to make it your city. And visiting Cleveland doesn’t make you a Cavaliers fan once LeBron has left, any more than posing in front of the Michael Jordan statue in Chicago teaches you to dunk. You don’t adopt a city in a weekend. You adopt a player in one game.

The numbers say the same thing

The official jersey sales rankings show this reflex isn’t limited to foreign fans.

When Luka Dončić was traded from Dallas to the Lakers in February 2025, jersey sales on NBAStore.com jumped 21% on the same period the year before, according to the NBA. Two months later, he topped the rankings in his new jersey. The public didn’t mourn his departure by staying loyal to Dallas: it bought purple and gold.

There’s one exception, and it’s revealing: New York. In 2025-26, the Knicks were first in team merchandise sales, while their best seller, Jalen Brunson, was only third in jerseys. In New York, you buy the team first. It takes a city of eight million people, a legendary arena and decades of shared suffering for the city to come before the player. Not everyone gets that.

The same story, a generation later

What happened to me with Rose and LeBron is happening right now to thousands of young French fans, with Victor Wembanyama. Before him, Tony Parker made the Spurs a generation’s team. Today, kids who have never heard of Texas know San Antonio’s roster by heart. The day Wembanyama changes teams, if he ever does (he just signed for five years), many of them will follow him. And they’ll be right to.

A different loyalty, not a lesser one

You often hear that following a player makes you a fair-weather fan, switching sides with every trade. I think it’s the opposite. Following a player means following a whole career: the beginning, the injuries, the departures, the returns. Rose got back up, fell again, and finished his career in roles nobody would have imagined for an MVP. LeBron changed cities the way you’d turn a page. Following them wasn’t betraying anyone.

Quentin introduced me to the NBA, Rose made me love it, LeBron made me follow it. I still don’t know which of the three to thank first. Probably Quentin: he’s the only one who never broke my heart by changing teams.