{"id":358420,"date":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358420\/"},"modified":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T17:27:07","slug":"nba-expansion-has-potential-to-reshape-conferences-add-division-if-seattle-las-vegas-join","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/358420\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA expansion has potential to reshape conferences, add division if Seattle, Las Vegas join"},"content":{"rendered":"

If the NBA were to expand<\/a> to Seattle and Las Vegas, the addition of the two Western Conference teams would \u201cpresumably require one current West team to move to the East,\u201d according to John Hollinger of THE ATHLETIC. Seattle is seen as a \u201cShawn Kemp slam dunk\u201d for expansion, while there is \u201ca bit more trepidation about Vegas.\u201d The three franchises whose cities straddle the Mississippi — the T\u2019Wolves, Grizzlies and Pelicans — are the \u201cmost obvious candidates\u201d to make a move to the East, but \u201cchoosing among the three isn\u2019t simple.\u201d There is also a \u201cmore radical scenario\u201d where the Bulls and Bucks move to the West and the Grizzlies, Pelicans and Rockets all move East, \u201cbut that\u2019s a tough lift politically.\u201d Making an 82-game schedule with 32 teams is an \u201ceasily solved riddle once you factor in the NBA Cup,\u201d where two games \u201care improvised on the fly once the league knows the other pairings for the knockout round.\u201d Because of that, only 80 of the 82 games are \u201cscheduled,\u201d and the math on 32 teams \u201cworks out perfectly if the league creates eight four-team divisions.\u201d Hollinger: \u201cIn my imaginary setup, divisions would be irrelevant for playoff seeding purposes except in tiebreakers, and winning one wouldn\u2019t even assure a playoff spot\u201d (THE ATHLETIC, 12\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n

PLEASE BE SEATTLE: THE ATHLETIC\u2019s David Aldridge wrote he is \u201cglad to hear\u201d the NBA is \u201cfinally going to get around to expansion, one way or another, in 2026.\u201d But the next proper noun out of NBA Commissioner Adam Silver\u2019s mouth on the subject next year \u201chad better be \u2018Seattle.\u2019\u201d This has \u201cgone on long enough.\u201d Seattle, through \u201cno fault of its own,\u201d has been without an NBA team for 17 years. The economic argument for Seattle \u201cremains obvious.\u201d The city\u2019s population \u201cgrew significantly\u201d over those 17 years, and the city\u2019s business community \u201cremains anchored by corporate behemoths\u201d like Amazon, Microsoft, Starbucks, Costco and Zillow. And the city is \u201cstill a top-20 Nielsen television market.\u201d Aldridge also pointed out that the city has \u201ca hoops-mad local culture in a metropolitan area that produced the likes of\u201d former NBAers Jamal Crawford, Brandon Roy, Doug Christie (now the Sacramento Kings\u2019 head coach) and Spencer Hawes, as well as current NBAers like Magic F Paolo Banchero, Pelicans G Dejounte Murray and T\u2019Wolves F Jaden McDaniels. Everything has been \u201cset up for a few years now in Seattle for an NBA return.\u201d Seattle was \u201cdone wrong\u201d in losing its team, and the NBA \u201cmust, finally, make it right\u201d (THE ATHLETIC, 12\/18<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the NBA were to expand to Seattle and Las Vegas, the addition of the two Western Conference…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":352380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[402,355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-358420","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=358420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/358420\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=358420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=358420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=358420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}