The era of N.B.A. superstars being empowered to choose the teams that they play for with free agency began when Oscar Robertson’s antitrust lawsuit, initiated in 1970, was settled in 1976. The era of superstars also functioning as their own team builders began when LeBron James, then of the Cleveland Cavaliers, staged a live television special in 2010 called “The Decision,” during which he announced, “I’m going to take my talents to South Beach.” I missed the live announcement, because I was at dinner with my wife for our anniversary, celebrating our own “Decision.” Afterward, I was driving through a small town in Long Island, when a man wearing a blue Knicks jersey burst out onto a porch, yelling obscenities into the night. From this, I gathered that James was not coming to the Knicks.

Some things, like the general aversion of superstar athletes to the klieg-light New York work environment of James Dolan’s Knicks, have not changed since “The Decision.” But the sense of shock that a superstar could not only write his own ticket to the team of his choosing but coördinate a few other tickets has mostly worn off. Or so I thought. What exactly is at the root of the delight that so many people—obsessive N.B.A. fans and casual followers alike—feel at the sight of the frantic swapping of players and teams that erupts every year at the start of free agency? Perhaps it’s the illicit mood of conspiracy and betrayal. Negotiations between teams and free agents were supposed to commence this past June 30th, at 6 P.M., but, within minutes, several high-profile deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars were announced, the equivalent of a couple announcing a marriage a few minutes after claiming to have met for the first time.

Forty per cent of the league’s players were free agents this year. Within the first week of free agency, three billion dollars’ worth of contracts had been signed. As the N.B.A. analyst Tom Haberstroh noted, out of the twenty-four players who participated in the 2017 All-Star game, only eight still play for the same team, and three of those eight play for the Golden State Warriors. Part of the pleasure of anticipating these trades, surely, is the idea that, while you need a transcendent talent or three to win championships, you also need chemistry. And chemistry can be hard to predict.

These athletes are humans with their own personalities, after all, and many of them have to figure out a way to function on a team without being its best player. Some players, like Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson, never do. And those are the famous ones that you have heard of. To watch even a little bit of the N.B.A. summer league is to feel a chill at the enormous amount of talent that is so close to N.B.A. caliber but will not make the cut. The players who make it have, among their myriad talents, the ability to adapt to a team situation.

As anyone who has ever played with a chemistry set knows, sometimes you make a big mess and have to start over. The speed with which players and teams turn fickle has reached dizzying heights, driven both by teams and by players. Two years ago, the Clippers pitched Blake Griffin as the face of their franchise, going so far as to stage a mock jersey retirement in a darkened arena as a choir sang, and calling him a “Clipper For Life.” Six months later, they traded him to the Pistons. A few days ago, some of the assets that the Clippers acquired in the wake of the Griffin trade were combined with the Italian player Danilo Gallinari and traded to the Thunder in exchange for Paul George, who himself had yelled at an ecstatic Oklahoma audience just a year ago, upon signing a contract, “I’m here to stay!”

Acquiring Paul George was not an end in itself, though; it was the price of admission to the Kawhi Leonard show. Leonard has long been thought of as the league’s most taciturn superstar—no social-media presence, no quips, the disarmingly minimal and honest answers in post-game interviews, such as the time he was asked what a championship would mean for Toronto fans and for all of Canada, and he replied, “I’m really not sure, I guess you really have to ask somebody on the street.” He plays the game at a fast tempo that has the curious quality of seeming to be almost slow. He’s not slow. He is deliberate in his movements, calculated like an engineer with his footwork, and powerfully explosive when he makes a move. In a surprising reveal, it turned out that all these traits applied to Leonard’s behind-the-scenes negotiating style: he is cunning, he is calm under pressure, and he gets the job done.

This free agency, chaotic as it initially unfolded, now seems tidy in hindsight: Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving to the Nets was the overture. Leonard and George to the Clippers was the spectacular crescendo. And the Russell Westbrook trade rolled in as a thundering encore. My vantage on the N.B.A. is from the point of view of New Orleans, where I live, and the N.B.A. kaleidoscope seems most remarkably symmetrical and strange when seen from the Pelicans’ perspective. At the end of last season, the Pelicans were mired in gloom. Going to games at the Smoothie King Center was like visiting a house where the parents were divorced but forced by circumstances to live together for a few more months. The Pelican star Anthony Davis had asked for a trade midway through the season, specifying the Lakers as his preferred destination. The Pelicans, out of some combination of spite and savvy, refused to grant his wish. Davis was benched. The team claimed that they wanted to prevent their asset from getting hurt; the N.B.A. insisted that Davis, one of the league’s marquee players, play, or there would be a fine. The second half of the season saw Davis limited to about twenty minutes a game. He sat out most fourth quarters.

I went to a number of games during this time, in order to soak in the strange atmosphere and to get a look at visiting superstars like Nikola Jokić, Ben Simmons, and Giannis Antetokounmpo, who eventually became the league M.V.P. Such is the current fashion in basketball footwear that all these stars wore pastel-colored sneakers in shades of pink, green, and blue. Their festive footwear seemed to mirror the happy mood of these players and their teams, all bound for the playoffs while the Pelicans—whose pregame warm-up jerseys looked like pajamas—sank into slumber. And then came the draft lottery and the ludicrous good luck of getting the No. 1 pick, which turned into Zion Williamson, who is both replacing Davis as the team’s standard-bearer and prime ticket seller and also as the most anticipated rookie since LeBron James.

There was a brief pause to wonder if Williamson would be enough to make Davis stay, but there was never much chance of that; things had gone from bad to worse in the divorce. Not long after the draft, Davis was granted his wish and traded to the Lakers. So it goes. The Lakers, in the wake of the disappointment of not landing Leonard, scrambled to fill out their roster. Among their signings was DeMarcus Cousins. Two years ago, the Pelicans’ media guide featured Cousins and Davis side by side on the cover under the new team slogan, “Do It Big.” Now they both play for the Lakers, along with Rajon Rondo, who also re-signed with the Lakers, and who was the point guard on that Pelicans’ team with Davis and Cousins.