Adam Silver: League and owners “not quite ready” to discuss expansion

The NBA is about to expand. Most likely there will be two teams, one certainly in Seattle and the other probably in Las Vegas, and the entry price for the new owners is around $6 billion.

The league was originally scheduled to expand in the fall once the new NBA broadcast rights deal is finalized. However, when NBA owners met this week, more was discussed about the league's role in international basketball – after an exciting basketball tournament at the Olympic Games in Paris (both men and women) – as an expansion, according to NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

“There wasn't a lot of talk about expansion at this meeting, but that wasn't for lack of interest, it was because we had told them we weren't quite ready,” Silver said Tuesday in a press conference following the board meeting. “I appreciate your point that it's not quite there yet — technically it could be fall? Maybe not yet. It feels a little cooler in New York, so we're getting closer to fall. But we've told our board that we want to look at it this season and that we're not quite ready. But I think there's definitely interest in the process, and I think we're not quite at the point where we've made any concrete decisions about markets or even, frankly, about expansion.

“I know I've said this before, but I think organizations should grow over time. That's appropriate. But it gets a little complicated when it comes to selling shares in the league, what that means for existing television relationships, etc. We've said to interested parties: thank you for your interest, we'll get back to you. And that's certainly the case in Seattle.”

Seattle is a major market that was home to the Supersonics for four decades before new owners moved them to Oklahoma City and turned them into the Thunder. There has been a grassroots effort almost since the day a team happened to return to Seattle, and now that day seems within reach. On Oct. 11, the Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers will play a preseason game at Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena, one of several games there in recent years. Silver said the game will help assess whether Climate Pledge Arena is NBA-ready for a team.

Silver addressed a handful of other topics in his press conference.

• He said the league is largely in a hold-and-see mode regarding the sale of two franchises, the Boston Celtics and the Minnesota Timberwolves. The sale of the Celtics was only announced this summer and is still relatively early in the process. The sale of the Timberwolves has become a bitter dispute between two sides – longtime owner Glen Taylor on one side and the duo of Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez as potential buyers on the other – and will go to arbitration in the coming weeks. The league is in a hold-and-see mode regarding Minnesota.

“That's a process that exists independent of the league and was written into the sales agreement and because, as your question suggests, only then would the league conduct an ownership review process depending on the outcome,” Silver said. “Those are the pencils that are put down in the league office, so to speak.”

• With Diamond Sports — the parent company of Bally Sports, which broadcasts the home games of 13 NBA teams via cable-based regional sports networks (RSNs) — in bankruptcyA national RSN model with streaming for local games is currently being discussed, or at least a way to bring the games to streaming services.

“But I think as we look at the interest from streaming services in broadcasting local games and all the additional features that come with that, there's going to be a transition and a transition for our viewers as well, in terms of how they discover those games and how they watch them. I think the end result is going to be a much better consumer experience,” Silver said.

The trend toward over-the-air broadcasts and streaming of games in a local market – a model that more and more teams are pursuing – is facing resistance from some owners, most vocally from James Dolan and the Madison Square Garden Company, which owns the New York Knicks (Dolan's father founded Cablevision and owns the Madison Square Garden Network RSN).

• Larry Tanenbaum, governor of the Raptors and chairman of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, was re-elected as chairman of the board, a position he has held since 2017.