The NBA has been very non-committal in talks towards expanding the amount of NBA teams beyond 30 teams. Adam Silver offered a little candor Monday when asked about the possibility.
“I think I’ve always said that it’s sort of the manifest destiny of the league that you expand at some point. I’d say it’s caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion. We’ve been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic. But certainly not to the point that expansion is on the front burner.”
The last expansion team to join the NBA were the Charlotte Bobcats back in 2004. It seemed to carve out a nice round number for scheduling purposes of 30. However, with the NFL’s expansion to 32 teams in 2001, it proved that 32 can be just as balanced as 30. It’s always been the assumption that if and when the NBA decided on expansion, it would evolve to 32 teams.
Due to the coronavirus, it’s doubtful any of these talks will be fruitful anytime soon, but for canvases such as Seattle it leaves a glimmer of hope that they can one day cheer for their NBA home team too.
