Sonics return? NBA owners could start expansion process in July.

Tim Booth, The Seattle Times on Jun 5, 2025

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SEATTLE — NBA commissioner Adam Silver indicated Thursday that there could be authorization to start a formal expansion process from the league’s owners coming in July during the next Board of Governor’s meeting.

Prior to Game 1 of the NBA Finals in Oklahoma City, Silver said he believes the current sense from owners is that expansion should be explored by the league, but cautioned that it’s not “automatic” that if the league moves ahead with a formal expansion process it will end with adding teams.

“I don’t think it’s automatic, because it depends on your perspective on the future of the league. As I’ve said before, expansion, in a way, is selling equity in the league and if you believe in the league you don’t necessarily want to add partners. On the other hand, we recognize there are underserved markets in the United States and elsewhere, and I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams. Probably even if we were to expand more than we can serve,” Silver said.

“We have an owners’ meeting in July in Las Vegas, and it will be on the agenda to take the temperature of the room. We have committees that are already talking about it, but my sense is, at that meeting, they’re going to give direction to me and my colleagues at the league office that we should continue to explore it.”

Asked later about what continued exploration could mean, Silver said he believed that authorization from the owners would create the start of a formal process. That would mean a committee within the Board of Governors being formed to examine the options and would include Silver and league staff taking meetings with prospective ownership groups from cities interested in potentially bringing a team to their market.

Hello, Seattle.

“If a decision is made that there should be further exploration by the league office and presumably a committee of team owners, it would be more of a formal process. There’s been no lack of interest. Certainly, I’ve gotten a lot of unsolicited calls and I essentially have said to people from several different cities, we’re just not engaging in that process right now. And I want to be fair to everyone, so I don’t want to have meetings with some and not others,” Silver said.

“But I think if we were to say yes, we’re now going to move into some more formal exploratory phase, we would take those meetings and in addition likely we would engage with outside advisers who would look at markets, look at economic opportunities and media opportunities, et cetera.”

As he did during the spring owners’ meetings in March in New York, Silver also said local media rights will play a role in how the league views the broader picture of expansion.

“There’s been disruption, because there’s been a dramatic decline in traditional television, and the streaming services — which have viewed themselves as national or global — haven’t really localized in a way yet to do team specific deals. But I think we’re going to see that and as I said, we will be fine because I have no doubt in terms of the value of that content,” Silver said.

Silver’s comments appear to be his most definitive on expansion since September 2024 when he indicated at that owners’ meeting that he believed expansion would be addressed at some point during the 2024-25 season. That timeline changed, per Silver, after the sale of the Boston Celtics as the league needed to see the final numbers from that transaction before it considered moving forward on the possibility of adding teams.

The Celtics sale was agreed upon at a franchise valuation of $6.1 billion, which is expected to be used as a comparable for an expansion fee should the league decide to move ahead on adding teams.