NBA Commissioner Adam Silver gives update on possible league expansion in the upcoming years

Commissioner Adam Silver recently confirmed that the league will soon begin working toward adding two new teams.

Speaking at his annual news conference before the start of the NBA Finals, Silver said he doesn’t think it’s “automatic” that the league will decide to add more teams.

Silver added that he expects the Board of Governors to direct the commissioner’s office this summer to “continue to explore” the possibility of adding teams. A meeting is set to take place in July of 2025.

There has been plenty of speculation about where the next expansion cities will be, but it seems that there are two inevitable front-runners.

It seems that the most logical locations for expansion were Seattle and Las Vegas. For one, Seattle has already proven that it can support an NBA team after being home to the SuperSonics for 40 years. And Las Vegas has been home to the NBA Summer League for years and is where the NBA Cup Finals are played.

Mexico has also been a rising contender in the rumors.

"One, there is of course expansion of current NBA teams. There I'd say the current sense is we should be exploring it. I don't think it's automatic because it depends on your perspective on the future of the league." said Silver "As I've said before, expansion in a way is selling equity in the league. 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, I think markets that deserve to have NBA teams. Probably even if we were to expand, more than we can serve. We have an owners’ meeting in July in Las Vegas. 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."

Silver also made a point to say they could also see the increase in teams going global. He mentioned places like Africa and Europe for possible landing spots.

"What also comes to mind in terms of expansion is the opportunity potentially to create other competition around the world. I think, as you know, five years ago or so we created a league, a competition of existing clubs in Africa. Mark Tatum is here, deputy commissioner, chief operating officer, he's hard at work on that, as are several colleagues. We have been discussing potentially creating a league in Europe. I view that as a form of expansion as well."

In a way, the idea around it could be G-League affiliates, or their own version of a developmental league.

"Again, just as the same as in American cities, we think there's an opportunity to serve fans in Europe. No knock on European basketball, because most of those international MVPs I just talked about are coming from Europe. There's really high-level basketball being played there. But we think there is an opportunity to better serve fans there. I view that as a form of expansion as well, and that's something we're also thinking hard about."

Although there's still no real answer on a timeline of this expansion, there will definitely be talks of the U.S. expansion in the states that don't have an NBA team, and it's intriguing to circulate thoughts of the expansion reaching overseas one day.