DoItALL9 wrote:Edit: Here's a link to the ESPN article:Silver also addressed a question about league expansion, which he told Suns employees the league will look at more closely once it is through its upcoming television rights negotiations. (The NBA's current TV rights package, a nine-year deal with ESPN and Turner Sports, is slated to expire after the 2024-25 season.)
In order to evaluate any teams coming in, we need to know where we stand from a media standpoint; that's obviously our most significant form of revenue overall," Silver told employees.
But Silver also discussed the "potential dilution of talent" -- that is, adding more teams would weaken the overall product.
"None of us can remember going into a season where there was a perception of so much competition, but, still, the goal is to have 30 competitive teams, not 20, or whatever it is, so think we do pay attention to the dilution factor," he told employees.
Still, Silver said that the league is, overall, doing well and that there is no shortage of strong candidates for new teams in new cities, though he didn't name any specific cities. Las Vegas and Seattle are considered likely candidates for new NBA teams should the league expand.
OK, so another round of "not now" by the league.
I also find it cringeworthy that he's now also talking about "potential dilution of talent" to stall those talks.
The NBA is the only one of the four major sports leagues with less than 32 teams, while it also requires the lowest number of players.
It's also the only one of those leagues with an actual global game that's probably #2 world wide(behind soccer, which no one will beat) in active players and has loads of talent to choose from given how easy(cheap/affordable) it is to play the game.
But hey, let's wait another decade to eventually bring a team back to Seattle, that should've never left.
Maybe they can win over those 30 year olds who still remember their parents talking about how the city actually had a team before....
