Adam Silver, It’s Time For A NBA Expansion

It seems the NBA has been growing exponentially in popularity in the last decade. This makes it the best time for the NBA and Adam Silver to look for an expansion. With the Lebron saga seemingly looming to close within 5 years and surely his game will decline, the NBA doesn’t want to lose this opportunity to keep their fans and ratings high. But now, you must wonder, what teams could they possibly do?

Let’s get one team just out the way. Seattle. Sure, Oklahoma City has been great to their franchise and have obviously made a lot of noise since their relocation. As an NBA fan, however, no one wanted it to be at the expense of Seattle, especially Seattle obviously. Bring back the SuperSonics, it’s only right for the NBA.

As for the other city or team, there are a few options that could be interesting. There are cities like Nashville, Louisville, San Diego, Kansas City or St. Louis, but my personal favorite? Las Vegas. Las Vegas makes the perfect sense for an NBA expansion team. Las Vegas recently just got a hockey team that went to the Stanley Cup final in their inaugural season in 2018. We all know the notorious Oakland Raiders are going to relocate to Las Vegas as well for the NFL. Why not jump on the trend of Las Vegas teams and put an NBA team there?

The NBA already has the Summer League there, which in itself, has been growing as a popular thing to watch during the summer. With the T-Mobile stadium already there for the NHL, the NBA team would already have a place to play, even if they decided in the future that they wanted their own stadium. From a business standpoint, this is also great for Las Vegas as it is a popular vacation spot for any type of trip, by throwing more sports on top of that, this only increases revenue for Sin City.

Of course, if we were to add two teams in the NBA, my vote being both in the Western Conference, we must move two teams to the Eastern Conference for the league. Memphis Grizzles is a clear choice geographically being that it’s more in the East than the other West teams. Preferably, I’d like the other team to be either the Minnesota Timberwolves or New Orleans Pelicans. The better option would be Minnesota, for not really any other reason than it just sounds more like an East team than the Pelicans (as weird as it sounds).

Adam Silver has danced around this issue for awhile, but why? Talent in the NBA is overflowing with more players not making teams and being wasted in the G-League. With the increasing parity in the NBA, especially this season. This is the time for more teams, more fans, and most importantly, more fun. Make it happen Adam, it’s time.