With more talent than ever suiting up in the most competitive basketball league in the world, talks of expansion are only getting louder.
Commissioner Adam Silver was asked about expansion on Thursday ahead of Game 1 of the NBA Finals and mentioned that the idea will likely be discussed by the league and owners in the coming months.
“We have an owners’ meeting in July in Las Vegas, and it will be on the agenda to take the temperature of the room,” Silver said. “We have committees that are already talking about it. But my sense is, at that meeting, they’re gonna give direction to me and my colleagues at the league office that we should continue to explore it.”
However, he clarified that the approval to expand is not a sure thing and that it won’t be “automatic,” regardless of the growing sentiment around the basketball world that the NBA can take on one or two extra franchises.
“I’d say the current sense is that we should be exploring it. I don’t think it’s automatic because it depends on your perspective on the future of the league,” Silver said. “As I’ve said before, expansion, in a way, is selling equity in the league. And 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, and I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams, probably — if we were to expand — more than we can serve.”
The NBA hasn’t expanded since 2004, when the Charlotte Bobcats (now Hornets) joined the league as the 30th franchise. Prior to that, the league added two teams in 1995 with the Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies (now Memphis).
The now-21-year wait to expand is the longest the league has gone without adding new franchises.
Past just expanding in North America, however, Silver continued to allude to his hopes of growing the game internationally, citing the Basketball Africa League (BAL) as an example of how the league hopes to grow into other continents like Europe.
“What also comes to mind in terms of expansion is the opportunity, potentially, to create other competitions around the world. As you know, five years ago or so, we created a league, a competition of existing clubs, in Africa. … We have been discussing potentially creating a league in Europe. And I view that as a form of expansion as well.”
It was mentioned in March that the NBA and FIBA, the sport’s global governing body, were in discussions for some time about adding either an annual competition in Europe or having an NBA-operated league there. It was also a topic at a Board of Governors meeting this past September.
“We think there’s an opportunity to serve fans in Europe — no knock on European basketball, because most of those international MVPs I talked about are coming from Europe, so there’s really high-level basketball being played there — but we think there’s an opportunity to better serve fans there,” Silver said. “So I view that as a form of expansion as well, and that’s something we’re also thinking hard about.”
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