After years of speculation, it appears there’s finally movement on the NBA expansion front.
The NBA will hold a vote at its board of governors meetings next week to look at expanding the league from 30 to 32 teams, according to a report from ESPN’s Shams Charania.
But if you had hope for the return of the NBA to Vancouver, I have bad news: our city’s not being considered.
There is a consolation prize, however, as it looks like the NBA will return to nearby Seattle.
Seattle and Las Vegas are the cities being looked at “exclusively,” Charania says. He adds that there’s “momentum” to approve moving forward with expansion, with teams likely to begin play in the 2028-29 season.
The NBA hasn’t expanded since 2004, when Charlotte re-entered the league.
With two new teams being added to the Western Conference, expect Minnesota or Memphis to move to the East, Charania says.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver put some doubt into the league’s appetite for expansion last year, noting that owners would dilute their share of league revenue by adding more teams.
That appears to have changed, no doubt helped by the fact that Seattle and Las Vegas are expected to pay $7 to 10 billion for each franchise.
While it was always a long shot, Vancouver was a city that Silver had mentioned in recent years when the topic of expansion had been brought up.
“Over time, maybe there’s more we can do in Canada,” Silver said last June.
Vancouver has been without an NBA team since the Grizzlies left for Memphis in 2001. The NBA has returned with preseason games on multiple occasions since then, with local basketball fans packing Rogers Arena each time.
Seattle, meanwhile, lost the Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008. Portland, which is more than twice as far from Vancouver than Seattle, has been the closest NBA city to us ever since.
New teams in Seattle and Las Vegas would likely play in existing arenas that host NHL teams. The NHL expanded to both cities in the last decade, with the Vegas Golden Knights playing out of T-Mobile Arena since 2017 and the Seattle Kraken hosting games at Climate Pledge Arena since 2021.
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