Expansion is coming to the NBA. Adam Silver is too smart a lawyer and too wise a commissioner to put it that bluntly — ultimately he needs the votes of two-thirds of a fickle group of owners — but that’s the reality.
Silver opened up about that on ESPN’s Pat McAfee show Wednesday.
“We’re just beginning the process of exploring the opportunity to expand..
We’re looking hard at it and there’s no doubt that there’s been interest in Seattle and Las Vegas..
We’re looking at those markets and others”
Adam Silver #PMSLive pic.twitter.com/RQRpCdig0S
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) April 17, 2025
“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…
“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.
“But I don’t want to jump the gun here,” said Silver. “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.”
Silver also addressed the rumor that the motive behind the Luka Doncic trade was some sort of plot ripped from the movie “Major League” to move the Mavericks to Las Vegas. The dots are not hard to connect, Mavericks governor Patrick Dumont is president and COO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp.
It’s not just Silver shooting the idea of a Mavericks move down, Dumont himself has said the plan is to build a new arena for the Mavericks in the Dallas area, part of a larger real estate investment, but that the team is not going anywhere.
