According to The Athletic, NBA commissioner Adam Silver says the league expects to decide in 2026 whether to expand, with Seattle emerging as one of the two cities most closely under consideration.
Speaking ahead of the NBA Cup championship in Las Vegas, Silver said the league has evaluated several markets and is now primarily focused on Seattle and Las Vegas if it moves forward with adding teams.
He later clarified to The Athletic that those two American cities are the league’s leading candidates.
Silver indicated that if the NBA expands, it would almost certainly add two teams rather than one.
That approach would likely bring the league to both cities simultaneously, meaning Seattle would be positioned to regain an NBA franchise for the first time since the SuperSonics left in 2008.
“We’re in the process of working with our (existing) teams and gauging the level of interest and having a better understanding of what the economics would be on the ground for those particular teams and what a pro forma would look like for them,” Silver said. “And then sometime in 2026, we’ll make a determination.”
Seattle was home to the SuperSonics from 1967 until the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder.
Since then, the city has remained a frequent topic in NBA expansion discussions, fueled by a strong basketball history and a modern sports infrastructure that now includes Climate Pledge Arena.
Las Vegas has hosted the championship rounds of all three NBA Cup tournaments to date and has been the league’s primary Summer League site since 2004.
The city is also home to multiple professional sports franchises, including the NFL’s Raiders, the NHL’s Golden Knights and the WNBA’s Aces, with Major League Baseball’s Athletics scheduled to open a new ballpark there in 2028.
Silver said the central question for the NBA’s 30 existing teams is whether they are willing to divide the league’s roughly $11 billion in annual revenue among two additional franchises.
He acknowledged that cities such as Seattle and Las Vegas have been waiting for clarity for years.
“I want to be sensitive about this notion that we’re somehow teasing these markets, because I know we’ve been talking about it for a while,” Silver said.
The NBA last expanded in 2004, when the Charlotte Bobcats joined as the league’s 30th team.
Under the collective bargaining agreement, players receive 51 percent of basketball-related income, leaving owners to split a little more than $5 billion.
A major portion of league revenue comes from an 11-year, $76 billion broadcast agreement negotiated for 30 teams — a deal that would be shared by 32 if expansion occurs.
League governors would need to be confident that new revenue from expansion fees, which could total billions of dollars, would outweigh the financial impact of dividing media rights among more teams.
Silver also addressed speculation about teams relocating to new markets, a topic that has surfaced periodically involving franchises such as Memphis and New Orleans.
He emphasized that relocation is separate from expansion and cannot be imposed by the league.
“Relocating a team requires that team to desire to be relocated, specifically the governors, and there is a process,” Silver said.
“Just because some markets don’t generate the same revenue as others, it doesn’t mean they are markets that are not worthy of NBA franchises,” he said, adding that league rules require owners to consider a team’s community support, operations and competitive opportunities rather than simply market size.
Silver described relocation as a “separate issue” from expansion, underscoring that any return of the NBA to Seattle would most likely come through the addition of new teams rather than the movement of an existing one.
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