{"id":913745,"date":"2026-10-02T18:26:18","date_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:26:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913745\/"},"modified":"2026-10-02T18:26:18","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T18:26:18","slug":"latest-on-potential-nba-expansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/913745\/","title":{"rendered":"Latest On Potential NBA Expansion"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2028\/29 season has been repeatedly cited as the NBA\u2019s target date for potential expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, but Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic<\/a> hears from sources that it might not happen that soon.<\/p>\n

According to Vorkunov, the NBA has discussed the possibility of a new Vegas franchise making its debut in 2029\/30 rather than \u201928\/29. However, he cautions that nothing has been decided one way or the other at this point.<\/p>\n

As we outlined earlier this week<\/a>, the league is in talks with three groups viewed as finalists for a potential expansion team in Las Vegas. Nancy Walton Laurie and Bill Laurie head up one of those groups, with another led by Bill Foley and Jerry Colangelo and a third represented by Steve Apostolopoulos and Marc Lasry.<\/p>\n

Shams Charania of ESPN reported on Tuesday that the NBA is expected to select a winning bidder from that group in the \u201cvery near future.\u201d Vorkunov says that decision doesn\u2019t appear imminent but adds that an unofficial agreement with the winning bidder could be reached before the end of November.<\/p>\n

Still, even if a group is chosen relatively soon and the NBA\u2019s owners formally vote to move forward with a Vegas expansion team, the arena situation in the city could complicate matters. While T-Mobile Arena, where the NHL\u2019s Golden Knights play, represents one possible home for an NBA franchise, Foley has said the building would require approximately $400MM in renovations in order to become NBA-ready.<\/p>\n

The NBA would likely prefer for a Vegas team to play in a new arena, and multiple bidders have expressed interest in building one, but that would presumably take a few years to come to fruition.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s more on possible NBA expansion:<\/p>\n

Charania\u2019s report on Tuesday suggested that the total cost for a Vegas expansion team and new arena is expected to end up at least in the range of $12-13 billion. ESPN\u2019s Ramona Shelburne<\/a> clarifies that the expansion fee would likely be in the neighborhood of $10 billion, with the arena likely costing $2-3 billion.
\nSamantha Holloway, the owner of the NHL\u2019s Seattle Kraken, has significant leverage in talks for a Seattle expansion team, since her company, One Roof Sports & Entertainment, holds majority control of Climate Pledge Arena, Shelburne notes. Another bidder for a Seattle team would either have to build a new arena or negotiate an agreement with Holloway to play at Climate Pledge Arena, which Shelburne says could \u201ceasily\u201d be converted to accommodate NBA games.
\nOwnership-level sources are curious about how the threat of a potential Seattle expansion team could affect Tom Dundon and the Trail Blazers, Shelburne writes. Over the course of a contentious negotiating process between the Blazers and the city of Portland related to the costs of renovating Moda Center, there has been speculation that Dundon is interested in relocating the club. The possibility of having another team to compete with in the Pacific Northwest could be another factor motivating him to explore that route.
\nShelburne\u2019s story also explores which of the prospective Las Vegas ownership groups would be most likely to pivot to Seattle if they\u2019re not selected as the winning Vegas bid, whether the league would expand to 31 teams instead of 32, and why sources expect the NBA\u2019s owners to vote in favor of expansion even though not all of them are convinced the time is right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2028\/29 season has been repeatedly cited as the NBA\u2019s target date for potential expansion teams in Las…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":913746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,299650,481496,87923,156620,481497,481498,85,481499,95681],"class_list":["post-913745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-basketball","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-basketball","tag-bill-foley","tag-bill-laurie","tag-jerry-colangelo","tag-marc-lasry","tag-nancy-walton-laurie","tag-samantha-holloway","tag-sports","tag-steve-apostolopoulos","tag-tom-dundon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/913746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}