The NBA may finally be one step closer on the long road to expansion.
Saying owners have a “curiosity” about the notion, Commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that the league will now study the issue more formally as part of an in-depth analysis, which would be the first official move in a long process toward adding franchises.
There’s no timetable for how long the process will take, nor have any decisions been made on what the expansion fee will be, when the new teams will start play — or even if expansion is going to actually happen.
“A lot of analysis still needs to be done and nothing has been predetermined,” Silver said after the end of the league’s board of governors meeting in Las Vegas.
The league isn’t creating a new committee to study expansion; the duties, for now, will fall primarily to a pair of existing groups, with the advisory finance committee leading and the audit and strategy committee also involved.
The decision to take a harder look at expansion wasn’t totally unexpected, since the notion of adding clubs has been a talking point for several years. Cities like Las Vegas and Seattle — long perceived to be the front-runners should the NBA decide to expand past its current 30-team footprint — will surely continue to push to be the eventual picks. And Silver himself has said previously that he expects expansion will happen at some point.
The next board of governors meeting will likely take place in September.
