NBA commissioner Adam Silver change his stance on the expansion of the league on Monday as he revealed that the officials have been looking at the analysis of the ramifications of expanding it beyond the currently existing 30 teams.
“I think I’ve always said that it’s sort of the manifest destiny of the league that you expand at some point,” Silver said during his annual preseason availability with reporters.
“I’d say it’s caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion. We’ve been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic. But certainly not to the point that expansion is on the front burner,” he added.
Silver said that the league has still not taken a call at expanding but they are looking into the pros and cons of it now that the COVID-19 pandemic has hurt all organizations, including the league, financially.
The entry of a new team into the league would come at a hefty fee of $1 billion and that will add to the financial stability of the league. The money then can be passed on to the teams.
“You know, we’re very appreciative of the markets that have indicated an interest in having an NBA team,” Silver said.
“One of the issues for the league office, and this comes up all the time in terms of competitiveness, it’s not a secret that we don’t have 30 competitive teams at any given time right now when you go into the season, measured by likelihood of ability to win a championship.
“One of our focuses as the league office is always on how do you create better competition. So that’s one of the things that we continue to think about as we consider expansion. … It’s an economic issue and it’s a competitive issue for us. So it’s one that we’ll continue to study, but we’re spending a little bit more time on it than we were pre-pandemic.”
No new team has been added to the NBA ever since the Charlotte Hornets got added in 2002 (They started playing in 2004). If the league now chooses to expand, Seattle will be the first in line to get in. They haven’t had a team in the NBA ever since the SuperSonics moved to Oklahoma City.
