NBA expansion has been treated as an inevitability for years, but a recent meeting of the league's Board of Governors poured some cold water on the idea, much to the chagrin of fans in open markets like Seattle and Las Vegas.
"We would be malpracticing if we didn’t figure out how local regional television is going to work before expanding," commissioner Adam Silver said last week. "The notion that we would hand over a team into a city where we're not currently operating and say, 'You're going to have to figure out how you're going to distribute your games to your local fans,' doesn't make sense."
For The Ringer's Bill Simmons, the explanation is even more simple than that—the league's massive new media rights deal, which splits national broadcast rights up between ESPN, NBC and Amazon's Prime Video, is so lucrative that the league's owners are loathe to add more teams that will reduce the size of each slice of the pie. Historically, expansion fees outweighed those concerns, but that may no longer be the case due to the sheer heft of the new deals which are reportedly worth a combined $76 billion over 11 years. (Discussion begins around the two-minute mark in the video below.)
“It just seemed like a lock it was gonna happen for the last few years and I think Silver wanted it to happen. I think there was a consortium of owners that wanted it to happen,” Simmons said on a new episode of his podcast, with guest Zach Lowe. “This media deal was so big, I just think there’s owners that don’t want to give up money anymore."
Expansion might be out the window for the time being. One possible way to add a valuable new market and increase franchise values, however, could be moving an existing franchise. To Simmons, there is one obvious team to move: the New Orleans Pelicans.
“There's some situations where there's some franchises that maybe could move to another city and be successful. And that's the other piece of this. And specifically New Orleans," Simmons said. "I don’t mean to start panic on New Orleans basketball. I’m also not sure there’s enough of a fanbase in place to even care that much. But the Smoothie King [Center] lease expires in 2029. This is an experiment that has not worked for 50-plus years in New Orleans with professional basketball. And if you and I owned a team and they asked us what we thought and I was like, ‘well we definitely have enough players to go to 32 teams. That doesn’t mean we should. We’re making so much money from the media rights, I’m not even sure what you could give me back that would make it worth it.'”
Simmons floated Seattle, Las Vegas and a new international city—Mexico City—as the leading candidates for teams, with Nashville as another option.
"I look at a situation like New Orleans—I don't know what that team is worth in its current state. I don't know what its worth playing in the Smoothie King, playing in a market that clearly has not responded to basketball in the same way of these other markets. If somebody bought them and just moved them to Seattle and paid everybody relocation fees and then you didn't have to split your media rights, that seems like where this is headed and I think there's—I'm just going to say it, I think there's some buzz starting that way, that this New Orleans thing maybe is the situation.
Lowe said that he hasn't heard of any other teams that are considered a "relocation threat."
Per ESPN, the Pelicans averaged just over 17,169 fans per home game this season, which ranked 22nd in the NBA. The team has also struggled on the court, with just nine playoff appearances in 23 seasons since the franchise began play in 2002–03. The team has won just two playoff series in that time, and have never advanced past the conference semifinals. The franchise has an all-time win percentage of just .461 and a postseason record of 22–37.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Bill Simmons Says There's 'Buzz' That One NBA Franchise May Relocate in Lieu of Expansion.