Editor’s note: This is a regular Sunday feature to wrap up news and developments in the NBA’s possible expansion to Las Vegas and Seattle by the 2028-29 season.
The next expansion bid deadline has not been communicated to groups in Las Vegas and Seattle.
Each group is mainly working with PJT Partners, the investment bank the NBA engaged to lead the expansion bid process.
In an interview Sept. 16, the day before the NBA’s most recent deadline, former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo said his group’s efforts are ongoing. In a video posted online by KPHO-TV, Channel 5, in Phoenix last week, Colangelo, who is part of the Las Vegas Jacks bid group, said the process is still playing out.
“I am part of a group vying for a franchise, and its ongoing,” Colangelo said. “It’s very competitive. There are a number of groups and big money that’s involved in this. I do believe that our group has a terrific management group to go along with the funds that are required. You just don’t know what the owners are going to do in terms of a vote.”
After serving as the chairman of the NBA’s Board of Governors from 2001 to 2005, when the league last expanded, adding a replacement team in Charlotte in 2004 after the original Hornets moved to New Orleans, Colangelo said it’s much different being on the other side this time around.
“When you’re on the other side of the fence, and now you’re trying to figure out what’s the best next move, you do the best you can, and you hope and pray that it works out,” Colangelo said,
Outside of the Jacks, the Las Vegas NBA expansion bid process still includes a group led by Golden Knights owner Bill Foley and a group headed by billionaire Walmart heiress Nancy Walton Laurie and her husband, Bill Laurie, who have a residence in Henderson. Foley’s group did meet the latest bid filing deadline on Sept. 17 and remains in the running, as the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported.
No one from the Walton Laurie group has publicly spoken about their bid plans.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has said multiple times that the league’s Board of Governors is looking at multiple ways expansion would impact the league, including the sharing of revenue between two new teams and the dilution of talent with two more teams pulling from the same pool of players. If the league expands, it is targeting the 2028-29 season.
Oklahoma City Thunder general manager Sam Presti touched on the expansion topic on Thursday during his preseason media availability. He said there are still some unknowns on the expansion process.
“It’s going to have an influence on the league if it happens,” Presti said. “That’s really up to the owners, and it’s up to the commissioner on whether or not they move forward with that. … There’s things like expansion draft, what those rules will look like.”
Presti has been in Las Vegas in December during each of the past two NBA seasons as his Thunder has at least made the semifinals of the NBA Cup at T-Mobile Arena. The Thunder was also once the Seattle SuperSonics before relocating to Oklahoma City in 2008.
“It’s a sign of growth and especially, I don’t know many leagues that when they choose to expand, that they feel it’s necessary, that can add cities of this caliber to their stable of teams,” Presti said of Las Vegas and Seattle. “Which I think is part of this opportunity that is pretty remarkable for Adam and the team of people he has working on these things.”
Silver has said he hopes to have a decision on expansion by the end of the year.
Contact Mick Akers at makers@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-2920. Follow @mickakers on X.
