Expansion is coming to the NBA. Most likely there will be two teams, one certainly in Seattle and the other probably in Las Vegas, and with an entry-level price tag for the new owners of around $6 billion.
The league was expected to take expansion up in the fall, once the new NBA broadcast rights deal was finalized. However, when the NBA owners got together to talk this week there was more discussion of the league’s role in international basketball — after an exciting basketball Paris Olympics basketball tournament (both men’s and women’s) — than expansion, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.
“There was not a lot of discussion in this meeting about expansion, but only largely not for lack of interest, it was that we had said to them that we’re not quite ready,” Silver said Tuesday in a press conference following the Board of Governor’s meeting. “I appreciate your pointing out that it’s kind of not quite — it might technically — is it fall yet? Maybe not yet. It’s feeling a little bit chillier in New York, so we’re getting close to fall. But it was something that we told our Board we plan to address this season, and we’re not quite ready yet. But I think there’s certainly interest in the process, and I think that we’re not there yet in terms of having made any specific decisions about markets or even frankly to expand.
“I know I’ve said this before, I think over time organizations should grow. It is appropriate. But it gets a bit complicated in terms of selling equity in the league, what that means for the existing television relationships, etc. What we’ve told interested parties is thank you for your interest, we’ll be back to you. And that’s certainly the case in Seattle, as well.”
Seattle is a major market that was home to the Supersonics for four decades before new owners moved them to Oklahoma City and turned them into the Thunder. There has been a grassroots push almost since the day that happened to put a team back in Seattle, and now that day seems on the horizon. On Oct. 11, the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers will play a preseason game at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle, one of a series of games there in recent years. Silver said the game will help assess if Climate Pledge Arena is NBA-ready for a team.
Silver touched on a handful of other issues in his press conference.
• He said the league is largely in a wait-and-see mode on the sale of two franchises, the Boston Celtics and Minnesota Timberwolves. The Celtics going up for sale was just announced this summer and is relatively early in the process. The Timberwolves sale has become a bitter dispute between two sides — long-time owner Glen Taylor on one side and the combo of Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez as potential buyers on the other — headed to arbitration in the coming weeks. The league is in a wait-and-see mode with Minnesota.
“That’s a process that exists independent of the league that was set out in the sales agreement, and because, as your question suggests, depending on the outcome, only then would the league then continue a vetting process for ownership,” Silver said. “Sort of it’s pencils down at the league office.”
• With Diamond Sports — the parent company of Bally Sports, which carries 13 NBA teams’ home games on cable-based regional sports networks (RSNs) — in bankruptcy, there is discussion of a national RSN model with streaming for local games, or at least some way to get the games on streaming services.
“But I think coming out of this, when we look at the interest of streaming services to carry local games and all the additional functionality that will come to that, there will be a transition and transition for our viewers, as well, in terms of how they discover those games and how they watch them, that I think the end result will be a much better consumer experience,” Silver said.
Moving in the direction of over-the-air broadcast as well as streaming of games in a local market — a model more and more teams are moving toward — is something that has been opposed by some owners, most vocally James Dolan and the Madison Square Garden Company that owns the New York Knicks (Dolan’s father started Cablevision and owns the Madison Square Garden Network RSN).
• Larry Tanenbaum, the Raptors governor and the chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, was re-elected as the Board’s chairman, a role he has filled since 2017.