Adam Silver speaks out about NBA expansion, landing in Europe

NBA commissioner Adam Silver talked to media members on Tuesday, September 10, after holding the Board of Governors at a Manhattan hotel, as Tim Bontemps reported for ESPN.

Although Silver admitted “there wasn’t discussion of expansion” at the meeting, he acknowledged that the league’s expansion “will be addressed at some point this season.”

In turn, Silver revealed that the league is actively exploring opportunities to expand to the rumored 32 teams son, and potentially exploring taking over Europe on top of everything.

Regarding that overseas expansion, Silver said that the league is evaluating the potential for an NBA-branded European league or tournament, but the details and timeline remain uncertain.

“There is no specific plan right now about Europe other than we’re agreeing to look intensively at the opportunity,” Silver said.

One possibility under consideration is the creation of a league that incorporates existing European basketball teams, which seems plausible only because it will be the easiest way to deal with time zones, trips, and all of the complex logistics.

According to a league source feeding information to ESPN, the NBA could also be thinking about investing in Gulf states soon. Regarding Europe, the truth is that everything is based on the current, precarious status of basketball in the old continent with many teams and leagues facing financial problems and instability, with top EuroLeague teams not happy about the state of affairs.

From there to the NBA simply “saving” European basketball, however, there is a stretch and folks across the pond seem to realize that’s simply not going to happen as quickly or easily as it sounds.

The most probable outcome related to an expansion goes by getting franchises settled on Seattle and Las Vegas, with those two places having the largest odds of getting the next two NBA teams.

Silver, however, made clear that the NBA honchos aren’t yet fully into crafting a solid plan for those 31st and 32nd franchises to get operations running in the super-short term. The NBA has yet to create a committee to study potential expansion markets, and the topic was not discussed at Tuesday’s Board of Governors meeting.

“We’re not ready to decide if we will expand, let alone which markets,” Silver said.

Silver mentioned the selling equity in the league and what that would mean for existing television agreements as the two main hurdles to clear before committing to expanding the NBA.

The commish suggested the issue would be addressed later in the season, but for now, he said he’s telling interested parties, “Thank you for your interest, we’ll be back to you.”