Silver: Meeting to Set Stage for NBA Expansion’s Next Phase

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver addressed expansion at his annual All-Star weekend press conference on Saturday, confirming that the league will have significant discussions around expansion at the Board of Governors meeting in late March. Silver said the league won’t be voting at that meeting, but expects to come out of it ready to start engaging potential ownership groups, the first concrete steps towards actually adding teams.

Seattle and Vegas remain the two cities at the center of the NBA expansion conversation, and Silver named both directly, as he has in the past.

“We will likely come out of those meetings ready, prepared to take a next step in terms of potentially talking to interested parties,” Silver said. Please Adam, you’re burying us in specific, actionable language. It’s overwhelming!

But there is a cadence and an art to reading into Adam Silver’s word salad, because there is signal in that noise. Though it doesn’t seem like it, we are so much closer to expansion than we ever have before, inching slowly (so slowly!) towards the goal, never as fast as we’d like, never sure if it will happen at all. But this does mean significant progress.

Silver also said that a decision will be made about expansion one way or another in 2026. For years, every time Silver was asked about expansion, it was also “well, we need to get this other thing done first.” We needed an arena. The NBA needed to sign the new collective bargaining agreement. And then there was the national TV deals. And then resolving the sale of the Boston Celtics. And then and then and then and then.

The CBA is signed. The national media deals worth approximately $76 billion across ESPN/ABC, NBCUniversal, and Amazon Prime Video, are done.

Now, there is no “and then.” What Silver had been pointing to as blockers for the better part of a decade are no longer blockers. The last thing remaining on the expansion checklist is expansion itself with a commitment in 2026 to make a decision about it.

The next step is going “out into the marketplace.” This is putting up the Bat Signal to interested ownership groups and gives them the signal to assemble interest, figure out finances, determine which cities will make bids, and figure out how involved they can or will be in the NBA expansion process.

Governor Bob Ferguson had an introductory Zoom call with Silver in early February. Senator Maria Cantwell said earlier this week she believed the league would move forward with a process in March and Seattle would be part of the discussion. The state is actively engaged in the process of bringing back our Sonics.

Both ESPN’s Brian Windhorst and Shams Charania also reporting they expect the expansion vote to pass this summer. Windhorst in particular has been historically skeptical of imminent expansion (as it turns out, justifiably so), but this is an abrupt tone shift.

One team? Two team? No team? Move team?

Something interesting Silver said was that expansion isn’t necessarily two teams. “”It doesn’t have to be a two-team expansion,” he said. “Frankly, it doesn’t have to be any number of teams.”

I think most people, myself included, have been operating under the assumption that NBA expansion would be Seattle and Las Vegas as a package deal, and I think that is still the most likely outcome. But he is keeping the door open for other configurations. Vegas does not have the arena situation figured out and that may take a few years to resolve, while Seattle has Climate Pledge Arena and an ownership group already to go with a brand already in place.

Silver did also make a comment that relocation is not on the table “right now,” although I am skeptical of this. The situations in Portland and New Orleans in particular are unsettled with their arena situations and that always creates a possibility for moving, and right now it doesn’t look great for either team. Things can change and deals can come together at the last hour and the NBA is obviously aware of this.

Does this mean Seattle is guaranteed a team? No, of course not and it would be irresponsible for me to declare that the Sonics are definitely coming back, so run out and get your “the Sonics have returned” tattoos.

I’m not going to sit here and try to convince a skeptic that this is happening. I’m an optimist, but also guarded and don’t want to get hurt by dashed expectations, so I’m right there with you. Until the expansion draft actually happens, I won’t be fully convinced it’s real. This process has been long and drawn out and excruciating and has taken far too long.

But what I will say is that for the first time, the league isn’t telling us to wait, but rather is telling us what comes next.

And that’s much closer than we’ve ever been.