Expansion pros and cons
The draft, the art, the tanking, and more about the NBA's upcoming moves to Seattle and Las Vegas
The NBA is beginning the process of expanding to 32 teams, with Seattle and Las Vegas reportedly set to receive franchises as soon as the 2028-29 season (sorry, Mexico City!). There is plenty of work to be done, and Adam Silver didn’t totally commit to a team in both locations, but two-pronged expansion feels inevitable now.
First, let’s count our pipping chicks before they fully hatch and congratulate NBA fans in Seattle and Las Vegas. I am very glad for all the beleaguered Sonics fans out there, who have suffered for a long time and will undoubtedly embrace their team with open arms.
The Vegas market is a little more uncertain. It’ll be interesting to see if crowds respond to a team that’s bad for a few years out of the gates, unlike the WNBA’s Aces and the NHL’s Golden Knights. Fans in the desert aren’t used to expansion teams behaving like expansion teams! And big sports teams have suddenly flooded the Vegas market; can it support the Aces and Golden Knights and MLB’s Athletics and NFL’s Raiders and NBA’s ____s? Being last to the party isn’t a good thing, even if the league has done its due diligence.
It’ll be fine. Presumably.
Second, the league will make oodles of money. More fans in new areas, bigger TV contracts, the potentially 11-figure expansion fees, etc. While I don’t care about the owners getting paid even more, it’s generally a good thing if the league is thriving financially (though this is worth a more nuanced conversation at some point).
With those thoughts out of the way, let’s discuss the impact of adding two new teams with a good old-fashioned pros and cons list.
Pro: The expansion draft will rule
Every website, blog, and podcast around (besides this one, which I’ll rectify eventually) has already run a mock expansion draft, which will likely allow the two teams to alternate picking 15 players, one from each team in the league. (There are explicit expansion rules spelled out in the current CBA, but there are opt-out clauses that could require a new CBA before the expansion draft, so nothing is set in stone.)
The messy transparency of existing teams having to pick and choose which players on their roster to protect (if things stick according to the past, they’ll have eight protection spots available) is delightful carnage. As a human, I feel bad for the players left to dangle in the wind, their futures thrown completely in doubt. But as a nasty fan of basketball drama and conflict? I love it.
In other sports, we’ve seen new teams get very clever with their leverage. Famously, the Golden Knights were basically a bunch of mafia insurance salesmen: “Nice Matt Dumba you got there, Minnesota. Be a shame if something were to happen to him.”
Those kinds of deals, in which an incumbent franchise gives up some concession to an expansion team to ensure a valuable but unprotected player isn’t picked, are well-established. But what if we see the opposite?
Hypothetically, what if the New Orleans Pelicans decided they wanted out of the Zion Williamson business? Perhaps they could incentivize Seattle or Las Vegas to take on his contract by sweetening the deal with draft compensation. I doubt something that seismic will happen, but there’s a lot of room for future executives all across the Association to get creative. Fun possibilities abound.