The NBA is slow-walking expansion. What's a realistic timeline?

And how do LeBron and Durant figure into things?

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

---

Reception of the Grande Condé at Versailles; Jean-Leon Gerome; 1878

NBA commissioner Adam Silver talked to the media after the annual preseason Board of Governors meetings. The biggest takeaway for most interested fans is that Silver said the franchisees did not really discuss league expansion this week, because the NBA isn’t quite ready yet. Silver said he expects to be ready to start plotting out expansion — one assumes with a Board subcommittee and a process for vetting potential new members of the ownership club — later this season.

Obviously, there are high-level NBA league staffers who have been working deeply on expansion issues for the past several months, if not years. At minimum, they have a concept of a plan. The league doesn’t do much haphazardly. Silver’s administration, in particular, is pragmatic and deliberate in how it pursues important goals. What it sounds like to me is that Silver wants the league’s prescribed plans to be firm before pulling them out of the oven and putting them on display for the existing owners. Given that he’s dealing with a mild insurgency from Knicks chief James Dolan probably serves to make Silver more pragmatic and deliberate (in other words: slow) on matters like this that will lead to a cash infusion but also split the shared revenue pie into slightly thinner slices.

I most recently predicted that the NBA would launch their expansion teams in 2027-28. I’m now questioning that. Here’s the timeline for other recent major sports league expansion clubs.