NBA expansion means more than a new (and likely an old) city

The Seattle SuperSonics’ Kevin Durant drives toward the rim during his rookie season, facing the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden, Dec. 12, 2007. Seattle, which lost the Supersonics in 2008 when the franchise relocated to Oklahoma City and became the Thunder, is a “slam” dunk for having an NBA team again if expansion happens, John Hollinger of The Athletic writes. (Barton Silverman/The New York Times)

By JOHN HOLLINGER / THE ATHLETIC

After years of hints, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said last week that the league would have an answer on expansion sometime in 2026.

Whenever expansion happens, it will feel long overdue. The NBA has been at 30 teams since 2004 and has added only one new team in the three decades since Toronto and Vancouver joined the league in 1995. In that time, the NHL has added six new franchises, including a couple of markets the NBA would probably have liked to have staked out first (notably Nashville and Las Vegas).

As for where to expand and by how many teams, it has long been presumed that two teams would be added and that the two markets would be Las Vegas and Seattle. Coincidentally, those are the last two markets the NHL expanded into.

Having talked to some peripherally involved people on this front over the last couple of years, I get the impression that if expansion happens, Seattle is a slam dunk but there is a bit of trepidation about Vegas. The two cities still rank miles ahead of any other locale.

The largest metropolitan area in northern North America with no NBA team is actually Montreal, with Seattle next and Las Vegas well down the list, but that isn’t the only consideration. Population is nice, but fans are better, especially rich ones, and smart people seem to think there are more of them in Seattle and Las Vegas.

So how would the NBA schedule work with two more teams? And how would the divisions and conferences line up?

Adding Western Conference teams in Seattle and Las Vegas would presumably require one current West team to move to the East, which would even the two conferences at 16 teams apiece. The three franchises whose cities straddle the Mississippi — Minnesota, Memphis and New Orleans — are the most obvious candidates, but choosing among the three isn’t simple. I think moving Minnesota to the East makes slightly more sense.

Making an 82-game schedule with 32 teams is an easily solved riddle once you factor in the NBA Cup, where two games are improvised on the fly once the league knows the other pairings for the knockout round. Because of that, only 80 of the 82 games are scheduled, and the math on 32 teams works out perfectly if the league creates eight four-team divisions.

Teams would play each of the 16 teams in the other conference twice, one home and one away, for a total of 32 games. Teams would play three games against each of the 12 teams in their conference outside their division, either two home and one away or the opposite, for a total of 36 more. And finally, teams would play four games against the three other teams in their division, two home and two away, for 12 more to take us to 80.

In my imaginary setup, divisions would be irrelevant for playoff seeding purposes except in tiebreakers, and winning one would not even guarantee a playoff spot. But they would matter for one thing: the NBA Cup. Teams would match up in their own division and fight it out, with only one team advancing from each division to the Cup playoffs.

My divisions:

Eastern Conference

Metro Division: Boston, Brooklyn,

New York, Toronto

Atlantic Division: Atlanta, Charlotte,

Miami, Orlando

Mideast Division: Cleveland, Detroit,

Philadelphia, Washington

Lakes Division: Chicago, Indiana,

Milwaukee, Minnesota

Western Conference

Gulf Division: Houston, Memphis,

New Orleans, San Antonio

Plains Division: Dallas, Denver,

Oklahoma City, Utah

Cascades Division: Golden State,

Portland, Sacramento, Seattle

Canyon Division: Las Vegas, LA

Clippers, LA Lakers, Phoenix.

The fact that fans in Seattle and Las Vegas can start thinking about a team takes us to another step in the process: the expansion draft. We haven’t had one since 2004, so it’s time for a bit of a refresher on how this works. Or rather, how this would most likely work.

The rules for the 2004 expansion draft allowed each team to protect up to eight players on its roster; that total did not include unrestricted free agents but did include restricted free agents and those with player or team options. However, any restricted free agent selected immediately became an unrestricted free agent.

That creates a thorny situation. Based on precedent, an expansion draft would be held before the NBA draft in June. However, these days, teams don’t have to submit qualifying offers until after the date of a potential expansion draft. Thus, the league may want to clarify how the restricted free agent piece will work for a late-2020s expansion draft.

Regardless, a team must leave at least one player unprotected who is under contract for the next season. Also, a team cannot lose more than one player in the expansion draft. (For instance, if Seattle selected a player from Oklahoma City with the first pick out of vengeance, then Las Vegas could not also pick a player from that team.)

As you can probably tell, this is a situation ripe for shenanigans by smart front offices, if the league isn’t clever about the rules, particularly regarding players who have player or team options. Notably, declining options and agreeing to new contracts before the expansion draft saves teams from having to protect a player and saves the player from going to an expansion franchise.

This became clear when I went through potential protected lists for each of the league’s 30 teams if an expansion draft were to happen this June. For most of them, it was possible to time free agency for enough players that the expansion teams would be left with mere flotsam to choose from.

In addition to declining team options to create more free agents, there are situations where teams might intentionally pick up options just to expose a player; the Clippers, for instance, theoretically could do that with Nic Batum’s $6.05 million and have him as their only exposed player. More likely is that they and other teams in this scenario of having eight or fewer protectable players would sign a bad player to a nonguaranteed deal for the next season in April just to have him be the one player exposed in the draft.

Also, consider that this is what teams would do with months to prepare, not years. Any front office worth its salt can line up contracts two years ahead of an expansion draft and basically ensure that nobody of value will be going out the door. Even beyond that, teams would also make trades ahead of time to optimize their expansion lists; because of that, anyone with any real trade value would most likely be long gone by the time the expansion draft hit. The only exception might be a roster such as Oklahoma City’s that is so loaded it is impossible to protect everybody.

My hastily conducted expansion draft exercise illustrates how slim the pickings might be for the two new teams as the existing 30 clubs use a variety of contract shenanigans to limit exposing virtually any rotation-caliber player. While the Seattle team would most likely delight in removing a good player from the Thunder’s roster, the next-most desirable player on this list is ... Goga Bitadze?

It gets really grim when you realize the two teams will go back and forth until 30 selections are made, although a team can decline to choose. That might be a real option if it’s the last pick and the only option left is an onerous contract like Patrick Williams or Joel Embiid.

Listing every protected player would be onerous, so here’s who I left unprotected in this hypothetical scenario. As you can see, it’s sobering stuff if you’re a would-be fan of the future Seattle SuperSonics or Las Vegas Whatevers.

Mock unprotected list

Atlanta: Nikola Durisic, Keaton Wallace, N’Faly Dante; Boston: Luka Garza; Brooklyn: Terance Mann; Charlotte: Josh Green, Grant Williams, Tre Mann, Sion James; Chicago: Patrick Williams; Cleveland: Tyrese Proctor; Dallas: Caleb Martin, Klay Thompson, Jaden Hardy; Denver: Zeke Nnaji; Detroit: Bobi Klintman, Marcus Sasser; Golden State: Buddy Hield; Houston: Dorian Finney-Smith; Indiana: Isaiah Jackson, Johnny Furphy, Kam Jones, Jarace Walker; Los Angeles Clippers: Cam Christie; Los Angeles Lakers: Dalton Knecht; Memphis: John Konchar, Brandon Clarke; Miami: Nikola Jovic; Milwaukee: Andre Jackson Jr.; Minnesota: Terrence Shannon Jr.; New Orleans: Dejounte Murray, Jordan Hawkins, Micah Peavy; New York: Pacome Dadiet; Oklahoma City: Nikola Topic, Jaylin Williams, Aaron Wiggins; Orlando: Noah Penda, Goga Bitadze, Jonathan Isaac; Philadelphia: Joel Embiid; Phoenix: Rasheer Fleming; Portland: Kris Murray, Jerami Grant; Sacramento: Devin Carter; San Antonio: Carter Bryant; Toronto: Jamison Battle; Utah: Cody Williams, Svi Mykhailiuk, Kyle Anderson; Washington: A.J. Johnson, Cam Whitmore.

Again, these scraps are what Seattle and Las Vegas would be choosing from if the other 30 franchises had basically zero notice that an expansion draft was happening. With more time, it would only get worse.