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  "path": "/the-nbas-expansion-gambit-is-about-getting-bigger-not-better",
  "publishedAt": "2026-03-17T16:02:34.000Z",
  "site": "https://defector.com",
  "tags": [
    "NBA",
    "adam silver",
    "basketball",
    "las vegas",
    "nba expansion",
    "seattle",
    "the $7-10 billion proposition"
  ],
  "textContent": "It's always good when the NBA tells you when it plans to do something it has already decided to do. You can think of the NBA's all-but-announced expansion gambit as a hamster wheel. Not as a piece of exercise equipment for indentured rodentia, but as a consumer product—you get the wheel either because you already have a hamster or because you're going to purchase one in about 10 minutes, since you're already at the pet store (nobody really dabbles in rescue hamsters). Either way, it's not an impulse buy.\n\nSo it is with NBA commissioner and astigmatic cadaver impersonator Adam Silver's declaration that the NBA Board of Governors—that's BOG, as opposed to GOB (Gang Of Billionaires)—is going to meet next week on the topic of expansion, almost certainly to Seattle and Las Vegas. This raises some obvious questions, none more obvious than whether the league has enough talent to expand when it already has eight to ten teams currently doing everything they can to avoid winning. And the obvious answer to that obvious question is \"What the hell does basketball have to do with the NBA's business?\"\n\nExpansion is one of the few topics that could get people's minds off the NBA's plethora of perceived shortcomings, because it is something new in a continent full of what's old. Or sort of new—everyone that pays attention to the league has known the two expansion cities involved for years without ever actually being told, proof that just because a league is secretive doesn't mean it can't still be transparent. Las Vegas will be the more expensive of the two franchises—think not of the $7-10 billion proposition quoted by insider sources (whoever they are), but likely well past $10 billion. This is only because Golden State is valued at $11 billion by Sportico, Forbes, and CNBC, the highest-ranking troika of organizations in the industry of pulling numbers out of thin air. Team ownership is a status game, and the competition between bored billionaires will be fierce enough to raise the price to one that would make a billionaire's heart rate quicken. Don't forget, after all, that Snoop Dogg once offered a billion to lead a consortium to buy the  _Ottawa Senators,_ for Christ's sake, currently ranked 29th of the 32 NHL franchises, an indication of the intoxicating nature of sports ownership even as the rest of the planet becomes a charnel house.",
  "title": "The NBA’s Expansion Gambit Is About Getting Bigger, Not Better"
}