3 issues the NBA needs to solve before expanding, and 1 it doesn’t

Expansion is coming to the NBA. It may take another decade, but the league adding another team or two is “inevitable,” Adam Silver said recently. There’s too much money in the game, and too much success overall, for the current 30-team alignment to remain unaltered.

Inspired by Silver’s comments, the SB Nation NBA network held a mock expansion draft. Our 30 team blogs selected eight players to protect from the draft, and then two teams were selected from that mix: the return of the Seattle Supersonics, and another team in Virginia Beach. You can see everything from our exercise here.

We played fast and loose with that mock draft — it was a thought exercise more than a 100 percent realistic simulation of what would happen. The reality is that expansion, while inevitable, has some enormous variables that need to be worked out before any expansion team bids can be taken seriously.

If the NBA opened up the league to expansion, it would find investors. The NBA is incredibly appealing from a business sense — it’s extremely popular in the United States and globally; it doesn’t have a huge issue like head injuries looming over it like football; it’s socially aware; and its demographics trend much younger than other sports.

For an investment group to start a new franchise, however, it would need to pay an expansion fee. It’s a flat, one-time payment that gives an investment group permission to create a new franchise. The last team to join the league, the Charlotte Bobcats, were given a $300 million expansion fee. In today’s NBA, that number might top $1 billion.

The current collective bargaining agreement makes it clear that said money is split between the teams, not the players, since it’s not basketball-related income. The players association might object, but it’s not clear what exactly it can do about it.

Where an expansion team is added partially depends on ownership groups that actually bid on these locations. If a pitch falls short, or if there’s no one wanting to invest in a certain place, the NBA can’t force it to happen.

Still, as mentioned above, everyone wants a piece of the NBA right now. SB Nation’s Tom Ziller ranked 13 potential locations for a new franchise, ranging from Vancouver to Louisville to a second Chicago team. Most of those would have investors available to bid on and finance an expansion team, assuming the NBA approves it.

If expansion happens, it’s almost guaranteed that Seattle will see the Supersonics return, assuming they can work out their stadium issues. But no other location is a perfect fit, as Ziller notes. The most appealing market, the enormous Mexico City, would be an incredible experiment. It’s home to almost nine million people and its main stadium, Arena Ciudad de Mexico, draws rave reviews from teams that play there. (The NBA announced Wednesday that it would again be playing two games there this season on Dec. 7 and 9.) But infrastructure problems could make hosting a team there full-time difficult, and it’s also more than 750 miles away from any other NBA team.

Does the NBA attempt Mexico City anyway, drawn by the allure of a massive market? Does it try Louisville or Hampton Roads or Anaheim? Does it try another city in Mexico? One NBA team employee told me Monterrey — a state capitol in northern Mexico and home to the third-largest metropolitan area in the country — is viewed by some as a better location, even if Mexico City remains an option for the future.

Regardless of the final decision, though, the NBA must decide which city can best host another franchise.

If the league adds two more teams, it’ll have to change the conferences. A 16-team conference with four four-team divisions, like the NFL, is the easiest way to divide up the league. But perhaps expansion is a perfect time to do away with conferences all together, something Adam Silver once talked boldly about only to say more recently that it probably won’t happen anytime soon.

It makes sense for teams to play their geographic rivals more frequently than opponents that might be thousands miles away. But the Western Conference has long overpowered the East, and the cyclical nature of it means that the trend probably isn’t going away. Perhaps the only solution is disbanding them.

If not, it sounds like the NBA would prefer to put two more teams in the West while moving the Memphis Grizzlies to the East. This would help balance the two conferences, to an extent.

Every time expansion is mentioned, the talent pool is brought up. Yes, it’s completely valid for the NBA and onlookers to worry about spreading talent too thin. But the NBA is a league that only employs 450 players (not counting two-way players this season), and the talent has never been better.

The most obvious example is the influx of international players. Repeatedly over the past decade, the NBA keeps breaking its record for most international players on an NBA roster to start a season. For three straight years, there have been at least 100 international players on rosters, including a record 113 last season.

Going from 450 NBA players to 480 isn’t a problem. Between the international growth and the rise of AAU basketball in the United States, there will still be hundreds of worthy NBA players without any risk that the talent level will be noticeably deluded. And with the G-League developing into a proper minor league system, NBA teams will have an even greater ability to develop players, too.

For something as big as expansion, I would imagine that we’re still years away from anything happening. The best case scenario is that there’s some resolution within the next four years, where the NBA actively moves the process along and maybe even selects bids.

On the other hand, this could drag out for the entire decade. East teams, seeing their weaker conference and possible conference realignment, may vote against expansion teams. When you have millions invested in your team’s future, it’s a hard vote to disrupt the status quo.

Still, it’s coming, and you’ll start hearing about it even more over the next few years. Consider this fair warning!