Finally, there is some level of clarity on the NBA’s expansion plans.
Well, at least there is a vote scheduled for later this month in which NBA governors will let the league know whether to explore if Seattle and Las Vegas would be viable NBA cities.
The vote is the latest step forward for a league that has essentially been dancing around expansion for the better part of a decade. The NBA’s first tangible move toward expansion, or at least its feasibility, could also provide the answers that some in and around the league have been eyeing all that time.
Sports investors and financiers have been considering bids and gauging the league’s movements for years. In that time, the price for a new NBA franchise has seemingly crept ever higher. In 2023, industry sources believed that an expansion team could fetch $5 billion on the market; now, that number could be $8 billion. Certainly, investors have been sharpening their pitches and cap tables in anticipation of this moment.
Front offices around the NBA have been readying for it as well. Teams have been trying to handicap when expansion could hit, going on forecasting retreats and studying what could be the most disruptive team-building moment to hit the league in more than two decades.
If the NBA introduces one new team, let alone two, it would represent a seismic shock to the system. The league would add 30 new roster spots and six new two-way contracts. If the new franchises follow their peers, that could also mean two new G League franchises. That would also be an untold number of front office jobs and new coaches on the bench.
The most disruptive part of the expansion process would be the expansion draft. Its rules are spelled out in the 2023 collective bargaining agreement. An expansion draft would work in the same way as the one that was in effect when the Charlotte Bobcats, the last expansion team, entered the league. Any player chosen in an expansion draft but waived before the first day of the regular season will not count on that team’s salary cap but will count toward that team reaching the salary floor.
Every existing NBA team would be able to protect a minimum of eight players, designating them ahead of time. The expansion team would have to draft at least 14 players and no more than one from each team.
That would, of course, create opportunities for existing teams to try to offload large contracts or make difficult choices about who to protect. And it would offer the expansion teams flexibility in how they build their first rosters.
Those expansion draft picks would be in addition to a team’s selection in the NBA draft. In 2004, the Bobcats were given the No. 4 pick in the draft as part of their expansion agreement, then traded up to second overall.
Expansion teams would operate under different rules than the other 30 teams for their first two seasons in the league. Expansion teams must, according to the current collective bargaining agreement, have a salary cap that is 66 ⅔ percent of the cap level and their salary floor is 90 percent of that. That climbs to 80 percent of the salary cap in the franchise’s second year, and 90 percent of that as the floor.
All those rules, at least, are under the current CBA, but that could change. The current CBA runs through June 30, 2030, but includes a mutual opt-out date of Oct. 15, 2028, which would terminate the deal on June 30, 2029 if it is activated. The addition of two new expansion teams could dovetail with a new CBA, or a new CBA could be written with those teams in mind.
The NBA has usually given a roughly one-and-a-half-year window between awarding an expansion franchise and that team starting play. The Bobcats waited 21 months from when its owner was approved by the league’s board of governors to when it began play. In the WNBA, the Golden State Valkyries waited 19 months to start play after being awarded a franchise, The Toronto Tempo were told to wait two years (assuming the 2026 WNBA season starts this May), while the Portland Fire had to wait 20 months.
The NBA, if it roughly followed this timeline, would have to award an expansion franchise by spring 2027 so it could begin play in the 2028-29 season.
If the NBA adds teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, it would have to move one existing team to the Eastern Conference. That has long been expected to be Minnesota or Memphis. Either would have ramifications for the league. While it’s hard to project the future, moving the Timberwolves out of the West, with Anthony Edwards still in his prime, would shift the balance of talent in the league.
Making the playoffs would become more difficult with 16 teams in each conference, and having two more teams would also mean talent would be more diffuse around the league. That could work in conjunction with the current CBA, which is already engineered to create parity and prevent teams from stacking expensive contracts (and theoretically the top players who earn them) together on one team.
The NBA could choose to realign the conference more substantively, changing divisions or even altering playoff seeding. If the NBA only adds one expansion team, it could further the call for playoff seeding that includes the top 16 teams across the league instead of the top eight in each conference.
But it is worth noting that expansion is not guaranteed. While the NBA will likely explore expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said before that the league could choose not to expand or perhaps add only one franchise.
“It doesn’t have to be a two-team expansion,” Silver said at All-Star Weekend last month. “Frankly, it doesn’t have to be any number of teams. I think the logical next move would be to say, ‘All right, we’ve had those discussions internally, we’ve made decisions about cities to focus on and what the opportunity is, and now we’ve got to go out into the marketplace.’
“I think that’s probably the most important step, to find out who is potentially interested in owning a franchise in particular cities, what’s the value of that franchise. There’s some work to do in terms of potential conference realignment. That’s the next step there.”
