NBA owners reportedly will vote next month on exploring adding expansion teams in Seattle, Las Vegas
· Yahoo Sports
When NBA owners get together next month, they will vote on exploring adding expansion teams specifically in Las Vegas and Seattle, according to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania.
This would be the first formal vote on accepting bids for those specific markets. The NBA Board of Governors meeting is set for March 24-25, and if approved, the goal would be for the teams to begin play in the 2028-29 NBA season.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said during All-Star weekend that the owners would be "having further discussions around an expansion process" during the March meeting, but would not be voting. That timeline may have sped up in the past month as Siver counted the votes and realized he has the support needed, as Charania suggests.
There is momentum within the board of governors and league office to approve moving forward with taking bids for franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle, according to sources with knowledge of the discussions.
Seattle and Las Vegas have long been the strong frontrunners to be the cities the NBA expands to. Seattle had a thriving franchise and fan base in the Sonics, but new owners who wanted to move the team to Oklahoma City, combined with an arena issue that gave them leverage, led to the team's relocation and the formation of the Thunder. The NBA owes Seattle a team. Las Vegas has seen a thriving NHL team, the Golden Knights, an NFL team, the Raiders, and a championship and well-backed team in the WNBA's Aces all become part of the city, plus the construction of an MLB stadium for the A's to start playing in starting in 2028 is well underway.
"I think Seattle and Las Vegas are two incredible cities," Silver said back in December. "Obviously, we had a team in Seattle that had great success. We have a WNBA team here in Las Vegas, the Aces. We've been playing the summer league here for 20 years. We're playing our Cup games here, so we're very familiar with this market. I don't have any doubt that Las Vegas, despite all of the other major league teams that are here now, the other entertainment properties, that this city could support an NBA team."
A team in Seattle would likely play at the renovated Climate Pledge Arena (formerly the Key Arena), where the NHL's Kraken play. In Las Vegas, while the T-Mobile Arena is a viable venue — it is home to the Aces and Golden Knights, and the NBA Cup semifinals and finals are played there — there is considerable speculation in the city that a new ownership group would build a new arena further down the Las Vegas strip, which would anchor a completely new resort and casino complex.
A few questions remain. One is what the franchise fee paid to the league by the prospective owners will be — money that gets divided up among the current owners and goes straight as a one-time boost to the bottom line. Charania reported that "Industry executives project proposals in the $7-10 billion range for each team." Whatever that number is, it needs to be high enough that a majority of owners are willing to dilute their shares in the league (and its revenue) from 1/30th to 1/32nd.
Another question is conference realignment. Both Las Vegas and Seattle would unquestionably be added to the Western Conference, which means one team in the West would move to the East — and teams will be lobbying and jockeying to make that move (wanting to go to an Eastern Conference seen as not as deep as the West). Minnesota and Memphis are the teams seen as most likely to move East, as Charania reports, but New Orleans also makes geographic sense.