Photo: Peter Baba

During an in-depth conversation on Thursday’s Pat McAfee Show, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver spoke candidly about the league’s long-anticipated expansion efforts.

The topic of expansion has lingered for years, and many around the league expected serious movement once two major milestones were completed: the new collective bargaining agreement and updated media rights deals.

With both now in place – the latter finalized in the summer of 2024 – the league has shifted its attention toward evaluating possible new franchises.

“In terms of expansion, we try not to look at it every year just because we don’t want it to be too much of a distraction,” Silver said. “What I’ve been saying for the last several years, we knew we needed to get a new collective bargaining agreement done. We did. We needed a new media deal to get done… We did that. We’ve locked in our television rights for 11 years.”

He explained that knowing the structure of their long-term media revenue was essential before considering the financial implications of adding new teams.

“And part of the reason you want to know what your television deal is is because you now have new partners,” Silver continued. “You’re going from dividing up the money in terms of 30 teams and those players to, let’s say, if we expanded by two teams to 32. So you want to know what those economics are. So now that those things are done, we’re just beginning a process internally at the league of exploring the opportunity to expand.”

One major benchmark the league was reportedly waiting on before progressing further was the sale of the Boston Celtics. That deal was recently agreed upon at a staggering $6.1 billion valuation, providing a crucial reference point when estimating potential expansion fees from new ownership groups.

Still, Silver emphasized that expansion isn’t as automatic or straightforward as it might appear from the outside.

“I will say sometimes on the outside (that expansion) looks like a no-brainer because it seems like you’re printing money to expand,” he noted. “But again, as I said, you’re really selling equity in the league. You have 30 teams that own the league, and now you’re saying we’re gonna have 32 teams that own the league, so you’re diluting the economic interest of all the 30 teams.”

He also raised a key concern related to the overall quality of play in the league.

“And you’re also potentially diluting the talent, because with… roughly 450 players in the NBA, even among those the greatest in the world, there’s only so many difference-makers. And then how are those players going to be distributed around the league? That’s a lot of what we spend time on in collective bargaining agreements, the right distribution of players. And so we’re looking hard at it, we’re sort of modeling it, for lack of better term, in the league office.”

While cities like Las Vegas and Seattle have long been rumored as prime candidates, Silver acknowledged that the league is casting a wider net in its early-stage considerations.

“Look, there’s no doubt there’s been interest in Las Vegas,” he said. “Seattle, I’ve been very public about it that it was a market that was fantastic for the league that we left at the time for understandable reasons, but there’s no doubt that there continues to be enormous passion in that market for the NBA. So we’re looking at those markets and others.”

As for timing, Silver suggested that the process could begin to take more concrete shape in the coming months.

“I think as we get into the summer, we’ll get into a more formal process of how we go about doing it. I don’t want to say it’s a foregone conclusion that we’re going to expand, but I also think over time, organizations tend to grow. And I look at the success of those markets for other major league teams, and so it’s easy to present a scenario where you can see it working successfully for the league.”

However, he cautioned that nothing is imminent just yet.

“But I don’t want to jump the gun here,” Silver added. “We have the 30 existing teams who all need to weigh in on this process, and also at some point need to have direct conversations with the people who are who are interested in those teams. It’s premature to do that right now. We’ve been contacted by groups who are saying we have interest in potentially being part of expansion, not just in those cities but others, and we’ve sort of said we’re not quite ready yet. But again, we will go through a very methodical approach to it and do it very cautiously, but we’ll continue to look at it.”

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