The timeline around a decision on NBA expansion and the expansion franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle doesn’t sound likely to see a vote by owners happening this summer.
That was the message from NBA commissioner Adam Silver on Monday during The Associated Press Sports Editors Commissioners meetings in New York. Speaking to a group of sports editors, Silver said he did not think the NBA owners would be at the point of deciding on expansion by the time the league holds its summer Board of Governors meetings.
Silver said last month that the goal was to make a final decision one way or another before the end of the calendar year, and reiterated that timeline again Monday.
“I think this summer would be premature, but there is time between the summer and the end of the calendar year,” Silver said during Monday’s meeting at NBA headquarters in New York. “It is still my hope for both Seattle and Las Vegas that we would be positioned to make decisions and decisions about specific groups by the end of the year.”
The NBA owners traditionally gather in Las Vegas during NBA Summer League for one of their yearly meetings. When Silver announced last month that the league was moving ahead with a formal exploration of potential expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas, the summer owners meeting seemed an aggressive but not outlandish timeline for possibly vetting potential groups and holding a vote.
Based on Silver’s comments Monday, the likelihood seems that the earliest a vote on expansion would take place is the owners meeting before the start of the season, usually in September. But a special owners meeting could be convened at any time to address the topic.
The league has mentioned several times the 2028-29 season as a potential start date for the expansion teams should it be approved by the owners. Approval coming sometime late summer or early fall would give two years of lead time, which those within basketball have said would be preferred for launching a new franchise.
“They’re going through that first round of the process now of preliminary indications of interest, vetting them and discussing with them more specifics around valuations and better understanding from groups about precisely where they would play and what those arrangements would be,” Silver said.
Bloomberg reported Monday that, “early indications show Las Vegas is drawing more interest than Seattle,” and that no formal bids have been submitted yet.
Among the bidders in Las Vegas is expected to be a group that includes Magic Johnson, a group including Vegas Golden Knights owner Bill Foley and potentially a group led by Marc Lasry who was a former co-owner of the Milwaukee Bucks.
Silver added that PJT Partners, the investment bank the league has hired to help in the process, has started the conversations with prospective ownership groups in Seattle. To date, One Roof Sports and Entertainment is the only group that has stated publicly its intention to pursue expansion in Seattle.
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