The NBA's expansion discussion will reach a critical juncture at July's Board of Governors meeting in Las Vegas, where Adam Silver expects owners to provide formal direction on moving forward with exploration efforts. The NBA has long held off on expansion by first agreeing to a new collective bargaining agreement in 2023 followed by its 11-year media rights deals in 2024. Finally, expansion work was expected to begin in earnest once the Boston Celtics reached agreement on a sale to set a new valuation, which came in March this year.
Seattle and Las Vegas are considered the two frontrunners to receiver teams. The Oklahoma City Thunder relocated from Seattle in 2008, while Las Vegas has become the NBA's unofficial second home between Summer League and the NBA Cup.
"Let me answer expansion two ways," said Silver. "One, there is of course expansion of current NBA teams. There I’d say the current sense is we should be exploring it. I don’t think it’s automatic because it depends on your perspective on the future of the league.
"As I’ve said before, expansion in a way is selling equity in the league. If you believe in the league, you don’t necessarily want to add partners. On the other hand, we recognize there are underserved markets in the United States and elsewhere, I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams. Probably even if we were to expand, more than we can serve.
"We have an owners’ meeting in July in Las Vegas. It will be on the agenda to take the temperature of the room. We have committees that are already talking about it. But my sense is at that meeting, they’re going to give direction to me and my colleagues at the league office that we should continue to explore it."
Silver also addressed the NBA's ongoing plans to expand globally both in Africa and in Europe.
"What also comes to mind in terms of expansion is the opportunity potentially to create other competition around the world," said Silver. "I think, as you know, five years ago or so we created a league, a competition of existing clubs in Africa. Mark Tatum is here, deputy commissioner, chief operating officer, he’s hard at work on that, as are several colleagues.
"We have been discussing potentially creating a league in Europe. I view that as a form of expansion as well. Again, just as the same as in American cities, we think there’s an opportunity to serve fans in Europe. No knock on European basketball, because most of those international MVPs I just talked about are coming from Europe. There’s really high-level basketball being played there. But we think there is an opportunity to better serve fans there. I view that as a form of expansion as well, and that’s something we’re also thinking hard about."
