NBA likely to add expansion teams to Seattle and Las Vegas in 2028

If you are worried about diluted talent on the NBA's 30 teams, be prepared as the NBA appears to be moving ahead with adding two more teams. And the NBA doesn't appear to be opening the process to all cities to plead their cases as the vote is for Seattle and Las Vegas exclusively.

Since 1988 which many fans have mentioned as the peak era of the NBA, the league has added 7 expansion teams for a growth of 30 percent. By adding Seattle and Las Vegas in 2028 that will make it a 39% growth (23 to 32 teams). So for every starting five from 1988 that would mean two of those starters would now be on other teams.

If you take the 1986 Celtics, but with only 61% of the team remaining, you'd lose let's say Kevin McHale, Dennis Johnson, and Bill Walton for example. Your starting 5 would then be Jerry Sichting, Danny Ainge, Scott Wedman, Larry Bird, and Robert Parish with a very weak bench.

The flip side argument is with the international explosion in the NBA there is more talent to draw from to balance this out. Regardless of your opinion if the the NBA is better today or in previous eras, at the end of the day, the league and its owners have prioritzed making exponential amounts of money over anything else.

With two more new teams, each existing owner will make somewhere in the $500 million range from their cut of the expansion fees. That will allow them all to buy their 25th houses, another personal jet, and a bigger yacht.

Seattle fans never deserved to lose their team, but did so because of a garbage team owner. Same thing happened to the original Charlotte Hornets (who used to lead the league in attendance back in the day believe it or not). Charlotte was later given a new team and Seattle will very likely be getting one as well now.

Sports betting has already done tremendous damage to American sports. Having a team in Las Vegas definitely won't help fix that. A large amount of NBA players make Las Vegas their summer home, so similar to the Lakers in Los Angeles, this could make their expansion team a strong free agent destination (and/or in the modern NBA player empowerment era, a city where star players force trades to).

It is also widely expected that LeBron James will eventually own a large stake in the Las Vegas franchise. Since Michael Jordan sold the Charlotte Hornets, there are no majority Black owners in the NBA and it's seemed for many years that LeBron and NBA have targetted him being the face of the Las Vegas organization post playing career.

The price of NBA teams have skyrocketted in recent years, so LeBron and the league will have to get creative to make him the majority owner. One thing has stayed constant while NBA billionaire owners and millionaire players have seen their wealth grow exponentionally, it's always at the cost of fans' wallets. Ticket prices and cable/streaming fees always go up, and there are more ads on the court, jerseys, and commercials, so networks can make the money back that they spent on these TV deals and NBA owners can pay players more without it coming from their profits.


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