NBA expansion: What to know about potential new teams in Las Vegas and Seattle

At the NBA's board of governors meetings next week, team owners will vote on moving forward with adding expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, according to ESPN. If 23 of the 30 governors vote in favor, the NBA will proceed to take bids for the new franchises.

According to ESPN, there is increasing support for expansion among owners, though some of them "want to see the final valuations of the bids plus the individual franchise fees before deciding whether to expand now or in a few more years."

Seattle has not had an NBA franchise since the SuperSonics' controversial move to Oklahoma City in 2008, at which point the team was renamed the Thunder.

Las Vegas has never had an NBA team, but the WNBA's Aces have operated there since 2018.

Does this mean expansion could be approved next week?

No. Voting to move forward with the process at these board of governors meetings, scheduled for March 24 and 25, would not seal the deal on Las Vegas and Seattle getting teams. That vote would take place later this year.

What it would mean, essentially, is that the NBA could meet with prospective ownership groups and take bids on the expansion teams. After years of speculation, it would make a return to Seattle and an arrival in Las Vegas more real than ever before. But there would still be more work to do.

How much will these teams cost?

Bids for the franchises are expected to come in between $7 billion and $10 billion, per ESPN, citing industry executives. 

Related: Last year, the Boston Celtics sold at a valuation of $6.1 billion, the Los Angeles Lakers sold at a valuation of $10 billion and the Portland Trail Blazers sold at a valuation of $4.25 billion.

What about conference realignment?

If expansion is ultimately approved, there will be 32 NBA teams and the two new ones will both be in the Western Conference. In this scenario, either the Minnesota Timberwolves or Memphis Grizzlies are expected to move to the Eastern Conference, per ESPN. It is unclear how this would affect the divisions in each conference, and it is unclear how the league would determine which team would be placed in the East. 

As noted by NBA.com's John Schuhmann recently, the East has collectively had a winning record against the West just three times in the past 27 years. Both Memphis and Minnesota would surely love to play in the East.

Is any of this surprising?

No. At a press conference at All-Star weekend in Los Angeles last month, NBA commissioner Adam Silver essentially said this was the plan. 

"My sense is, at the March board of governors meetings, we'll be having further discussions around an expansion process," Silver said then. While the league won't be holding a vote on whether or not to expand, "we will likely come out of those meetings ready, prepared to take a next step in terms of potentially talking to interested parties."

Silver added: "I think the logical next move would be to say, all right, we've had those discussions internally, we've made decisions about cities to focus on and what the opportunity is, and now we've got to go out into the marketplace. I think that's probably the most important step, to find out who is potentially interested in owning a franchise in particular cities, what's the value of that franchise. There's some work to do in terms of potential conference realignment. That's the next step there."

After this vote, what's next?

Ideally, from the NBA's perspective, two simultaneous bidding wars involving extraordinarily wealthy people. According to the Las Vegas Review Journal's Mitch Akers, Magic Johnson plans to speak with Silver after the board of governors meetings about being a part of a Las Vegas ownership group. Bill Foley, who owns the NHL's Vegas Golden Knights and 15% of T-Mobile Arena, has also said that he wants to be part of a Las Vegas ownership group. LeBron James and Shaquille O'Neal have both publicly expressed interest, too.

Assuming next week's vote goes the way the league expects it to and the proposals meet the NBA's high standards, then the board of governors will have to vote to approve the new teams.

The NBA is targeting the 2028-29 season for the debut of these new franchises, per ESPN. Before then, the teams would have to staff up and the league would have to hold an expansion draft. The expansion draft would take place in the 2028 offseason.

Would the new Seattle team be called the SuperSonics?

There's no reason that it can't be. When the city of Seattle and the Thunder's ownership group settled a lawsuit over the arena lease in 2008, the two parties agreed that, should the city get a new team, the Thunder's ownership group would cede the rights to the name and the associated logos to the new team's owner.

If the Sonics return, the Thunder would also give the new team the Sonics' history, per ESPN's Brian Windhorst, in the same way that, in 2014, when the Charlotte Bobcats changed their name to the Hornets, they reclaimed the Hornets' 1998-2002 history from the New Orleans Pelicans.