NBA expansion will be on table, just not yet, Silver says - ESPN

NEW YORK — NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Tuesday that there wasn't discussion of expansion at this week's meeting of the league's board of governors but that the topic will be addressed at some point «this season.»

«There was not a lot of discussion in this meeting about expansion, but only largely not for lack of interest, it was that we had said to them that we're not quite ready,» Silver said at his news conference at the conclusion of the meetings Tuesday afternoon at a luxury midtown Manhattan hotel.

«It was something that we told our board we plan to address this season, and we're not quite ready yet. But I think there's certainly interest in the process, and I think that we're not there yet in terms of having made any specific decisions about markets or even frankly to expand.»

The topic of expansion has been an ongoing one in NBA circles over the past few years, with both Seattle and Las Vegas being floated as potential homes for new teams. As time has passed, Silver has repeatedly said that the league was going to address expansion in a specific order, taking care of its new collective bargaining agreement and then its new television deal before turning to the topic of expansion.

The CBA was agreed to in spring 2023, and the NBA came to a tentative agreement with Disney, Comcast and Amazon this year on its new television deal, paving the way for the league to begin looking at expansion over the next several months. The first step in that process would be forming a committee of several owners to explore the topic of expansion and to determine what the next steps would be.

Speaking of Seattle, Silver was also asked specifically about Climate Pledge Arena, formerly known as Key Arena, and whether the