How NBA expansion might reshape things: new divisions, realignment and a draft – The Athletic
After years of little hints and innuendos, NBA commissioner Adam Silver put the first definitive line in the sand this week when he said that the league would have an answer on expansion sometime in 2026.
Technically, that leaves the door open for the league to reverse course and stay at 30 teams for the extended future. However, one presumes Silver wouldn’t have dropped a nugget like this only to turn around and say “Never mind!” in six months. In all probability, the expansion ship is leaving port.
That still gives the league quite a bit of leeway on timing. When the NBA announced a Charlotte expansion team in January 2003, it started play in the 2004-05 season. A similar timeline could see Silver formally award teams in the middle of the 2026-27 season to begin play in 2027-28, but the league could easily drag its feet and extend the process another year or two. (Or three or…)
Whenever expansion happens, it will feel long overdue. The NBA has been at 30 teams since 2004 and has added only one new team in the three decades since Toronto and Vancouver joined the league in 1995. In that time, its main rival for winter sports eyeballs and arenas, the NHL, has added six new franchises, including a few markets that the NBA probably would have liked to have staked out first (notably Nashville and Las Vegas; Winnipeg and Columbus, maybe not so much).
As for where to expand and how many, it has long been presumed that two teams would be added (the logistics of just adding one, while possible, are tricky), and that the two markets would be Las Vegas and Seattle. Coincidentally, those are also the last two markets the NHL expanded into.
If expansion happens, having talked to some peripherally involved people on this front over the last couple of years, I get the impression that Seattle is a Shawn Kemp slam dunk, and there’s a bit more trepidation about Vegas, but those two still rank miles ahead of any other locale on the league’s proverbial draft board. The largest metro area in northern North America with no NBA team is actually Montreal, with Seattle next and Las Vegas well down the list, but that isn’t the only consideration. Population is nice, but fans are better, especially rich ones, and smart people seem to think there are more of them in Seattle and Las Vegas.
So how would the schedule work with two more teams? And how would the divisions and conferences line up?
Adding two Western Conference teams in Seattle and Las Vegas would presumably require one current West team to move to the East, which would even the two conferences at 16 teams apiece. The three franchises whose cities straddle the Mississippi — Minnesota, Memphis and New Orleans — are the most obvious candidates, but choosing among the three isn’t simple. I think moving Minnesota to the East makes slightly more sense, as I’ll outline below. (There is also a more radical scenario where Chicago and Milwaukee move west and Memphis, New Orleans and Houston all move east, but that’s a tough lift politically.)
Making an 82-game schedule with 32 teams is an easily solved riddle once you factor in the NBA Cup, where two games are improvised on the fly once the league knows the other pairings for the knockout round. Because of that, only 80 of the 82 games are “scheduled,” and the math on 32 teams works out perfectly if the league creates eight four-team divisions. Teams would play each of the 16 teams in the other conference twice, one home and once away, for a total of 32 games. Teams would play three games against each of the 12 teams in their conference outside their division, either two home and one away or the opposite, for a total of 36 more. And finally, teams would play four games against the three other teams in their division, two home and two away, for 12 more to take us to 80.
In my imaginary setup, divisions would be irrelevant for playoff seeding purposes except in tiebreakers, and winning one wouldn’t even assure a playoff spot. But they would matter for one thing: the NBA Cup. Teams would match up in their own division and fight it out, with only one team advancing from each division to the Cup playoffs.
Getting back to the discussion of which teams move east, when I created eight four-team divisions, it seemed much more organic and logical, with Minnesota making the move. My divisions:
Eastern Conference
Metro Division: Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Toronto
Atlantic Division: Atlanta, Charlotte, Miami, Orlando
Mideast Division: Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, Washington
Lakes Division: Chicago, Indiana, Milwaukee, Minnesota
Western Conference
Gulf Division: Houston, Memphis, New Orleans, San Antonio
Plains Division: Dallas, Denver, Oklahoma City, Utah
Cascades Division: Golden State, Portland, Sacramento, Seattle
Canyon Division: Las Vegas, LA Clippers, L.A. Lakers, Phoenix
That’s not all to consider today, though. The fact that fans in Seattle and Las Vegas can start thinking about a team takes us to another step in the process: the expansion draft. We haven’t had one since 2004, so it’s time for a bit of a refresher on how this works. Or rather, how this would likely work. The 2023 collective bargaining agreement gives the league and National Basketball Players Association some discretion to deviate from the past model used in the Charlotte expansion, but it would clearly be the template.
From page 549:
“The NBA may determine during the term of this Agreement to expand the number of Teams and to have existing Teams make available for assignment to any such Expansion Teams the Player Contracts of a certain number of Veterans under substantially the same terms and in substantially the same manner that Player Contracts were made available to the Charlotte expansion Team pursuant to the 1999 NBA/NBPA Collective Bargaining Agreement; provided, however, that any change shall be subject to the approval of the Players Association, which shall not be unreasonably withheld.”
The rules for that expansion draft allowed each team to protect up to eight players on its roster; that total does not include unrestricted free agents but does include restricted free agents (RFAs) and those with player or team options. However, any RFA selected immediately becomes an unrestricted free agent.
That creates a thorny situation. Based on precedent, an expansion draft would be held before the NBA draft in mid-to-late June. However, these days, teams don’t have to submit qualifying offers until after the date of a potential expansion draft. Thus, the league may want to clarify how the RFA piece will work for a late-2020s expansion draft.
Regardless, a team must leave at least one player unprotected who is under contract for the following season. Also, a team cannot lose more than one player in the expansion draft. (For instance, if Seattle selected a player from Oklahoma City with the first pick out of pure hatred and vengeance, then Las Vegas could not also pick a player from that team.)
As you can probably tell, this is a situation ripe for shenanigans by smart front offices if the league isn’t clever about the rules, particularly regarding players who have player or team options. Notably, declining options and agreeing to new contracts before the expansion draft saves teams from having to protect a player and saves the player from going to an expansion franchise.
This became clear when I went through the exercise of going through potential protected lists for each of the league’s 30 teams if an expansion draft were to happen this June. For most of them, it was possible to time free agency for enough players that the expansion teams would be left with mere flotsam to choose from.
In addition to declining team options to create more free agents, there are scenarios where teams might intentionally pick up options just to expose a player; the Clippers, for instance, theoretically could do that with Nic Batum’s $6.05 million and have him as their only exposed player. More likely, but beyond the scope of this exercise, is that they and other teams in this scenario of having eight or fewer protectable players, such as Miami, would sign a bad player to a non-guaranteed deal for the following season in April just to have them be the one player exposed in the draft.
Also, consider that this is what teams would do with mere months to prepare, not years. Any front office worth its salt can line up contracts two years ahead of an expansion draft and basically ensure that nobody of value will be going out the door. Even beyond that, teams also would make trades ahead of time to optimize their expansion lists; because of that, anyone with any real trade value likely would be long gone by the time the expansion draft hit. The only exception might be a roster like Oklahoma City’s that is so loaded it’s impossible to protect everybody. (Side note: Has a team ever announced, “Revenge is a dish best served cold!” at an expansion draft before?)
The league also needs to figure out what it’s doing with two-way players in regard to the expansion draft. I didn’t include them in my exercise below, but in reality, some of the most desirable players for an expansion team might very well be two-ways.
As noted above, I made a protected list for every team. Even my hastily conducted expansion-draft exercise illustrates how slim the pickings might be for the two new teams, as the existing 30 clubs use a variety of contract shenanigans to limit exposing virtually any rotation-caliber player. While the Seattle team would likely delight in removing a good player from the Thunder’s roster, the next-most desirable player on this list is … Goga Bitadze?
It gets really grim when you realize the two teams will go back and forth until 30 selections are made, although a team can decline to choose. That might be a real option if it’s the last pick and the only option left is an onerous contract like Patrick Williams or Joel Embiid.
Listing every protected player would be onerous, so here’s who I have left unprotected in this completely hypothetical scenario. As you can see, it’s sobering stuff if you’re a would-be fan of the future Seattle SuperSonics or Las Vegas Whatevers.
Mock unprotected list
Atlanta: Nikola Đurišić, Keaton Wallace, N’Faly Dante
Boston: Luka Garza
Brooklyn: Terance Mann
Charlotte: Josh Green, Grant Williams, Tre Mann, Sion James
Chicago: Patrick Williams
Cleveland: Tyrese Proctor
Dallas: Caleb Martin, Klay Thompson, Jaden Hardy
Denver: Zeke Nnaji
Detroit: Bobi Klintman, Marcus Sasser
Golden State: Buddy Hield
Houston: Dorian Finney-Smith
Indiana: Isaiah Jackson, Johnny Furphy, Kam Jones, Jarace Walker
LA Clippers: Cam Christie
L.A. Lakers: Dalton Knecht
Memphis: John Konchar, Brandon Clarke
Miami: Nikola Jović
Milwaukee: Andre Jackson Jr.
Minnesota: Terrence Shannon Jr.
New Orleans: Dejounte Murray, Jordan Hawkins, Micah Peavy
New York: Pacome Dadiet
Oklahoma City: Nikola Topić, Jaylin Williams, Aaron Wiggins
Orlando: Noah Penda, Goga Bitadze, Jonathan Isaac
Philadelphia: Joel Embiid
Phoenix: Rasheer Fleming
Portland: Kris Murray, Jerami Grant
Sacramento: Devin Carter
San Antonio: Carter Bryant
Toronto: Jamison Battle
Utah: Cody Williams, Svi Mykhailiuk, Kyle Anderson
Washington: A.J. Johnson, Cam Whitmore
Again, these scraps are what Seattle and Las Vegas would be choosing from if the other 30 franchises had basically zero notice that an expansion draft was happening. With more time, it would only get worse.
Once the expansion draft is over, the two expansion teams would select in the real draft in late June. Where they select would be negotiated, but the then-Bobcats were awarded the fourth pick in 2004. It’s possible that language also exists that limits their ability to win the draft lottery in their first seasons.
After that, an expansion team could build the rest of its roster in free agency, but it won’t have a full salary cap. The CBA specifies that an expansion team will have a salary cap worth two-thirds of everyone else’s in its first season and 80 percent of it in the second. Players selected in the expansion draft count, but they come off the books if they’re waived before the opening day of the first season.
Nonetheless, targeted hunting of younger players in free agency is likely to be a more effective roster-building tool for these teams than anything they’d get in the expansion draft.
And from there … we’re off. By the third year, an expansion team would essentially be “normal” in the eyes of the salary-cap czars, with the same limits as everyone else. And, one hopes, the front offices in Seattle and Las Vegas (or wherever) would have found enough players in the intervening two years to keep the initial excitement going.
