There are NBA stories that sound exaggerated until you remember how global LeBron James has always been. This one somehow still manages to top the scale.
On a recent segment tied to Brian Windhorst’s trip through Serbia and his reporting for The Hoop Collective, Windhorst shared a story he says he heard directly from former Cavaliers wing Saša Pavlović: Pavlović bought one of LeBron’s old cars, a BMW, and, astonishingly, he still drives it.
“Twenty years Sasa bought one of LeBron’s cars… it’s a BMW. 7-series. It’s well known in Belgrade… The craziest part, he still drives it,” Windhorst said.
@basketball.sphere Anecdote about Sasa Pavlovic and the car he bought from LeBron James 😄 Hear the story from Brian Windhorst on his “Hoops Collective” podcast 👀📹 #basketball #nba #lebronjames #clevelandcavaliers #serbia ♬ original sound – Basketball Sphere
The punchline, though, is what happened when the car made it across the ocean. Pavlović told Windhorst that in Belgrade, the vehicle developed its own fame, to the point that, as the viral retellings put it, the car became “more famous in Belgrade than Sasha” himself.
According to the same anecdote, people even went to see it when it arrived at the port, treating the delivery less like a shipment and more like a homecoming.
And because every great basketball myth needs one extra detail that feels impossible, the story includes this: the BMW still has Ohio plates on it, yet Pavlović says he can still drive it.
What makes the anecdote stick is that it’s not really about a car. It’s about how NBA stardom travels. Pavlović had a long professional career and played meaningful minutes alongside LeBron in Cleveland, but in Belgrade, one tangible relic of LeBron’s presence apparently carried its own gravitational pull. You can measure legacy in rings, records, and highlights. Sometimes, you can also measure it in who shows up at the port to greet a BMW.
