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The NBA held its annual meeting in Las Vegas this past week — what NBA commissioner Adam Silver affectionately refers to as the NBA’s equivalent to Major League Baseball’s winter meetings — and then Silver held his state of the union briefing and took questions from reporters.
Today, I’ll outline the highlights from Silver’s comments, and we’ll start first with the update on NBA expansion, both domestically and internationally.
Silver said that bids from multiple groups in both Seattle and Las Vegas are being considered by the league, and by year-end we should have answers on where and what expansion will look like. League sources have additionally said there could be an announcement about Seattle and Las Vegas teams as early as September.
Internationally, the NBA Europe League is still on track and is actually getting pretty close to formation.
“Things are where I hoped they would be,” Silver said of the coming international league. “We’ve had tremendous interest from multiple cities in Europe, including cities that we didn’t even ask for bids from.
“We discussed with our board today that we’re in the process of finalizing those bids ... we’re hoping to wrap up some of those deals over the next several weeks, and then announcements will be forthcoming.”
The halted trade between the Los Angeles Clippers and Toronto Raptors that would include Kawhi Leonard was also a topic of discussion with Silver.
Since the ongoing investigation of the Clippers and Leonard regarding potential cap circumvention could carry consequences for Leonard, the teams are waiting until the investigation concludes before finalizing the trade.
Silver was clear that the investigation has gone on longer than expected, but that being thorough is important in this situation and that a resolution is not only expected before the summer is over but is also necessary.
In a number of different ways, Silver was also asked about the state of the current collective bargaining agreement, how the second apron is impacting teams and if there are plans to make changes, but he didn’t seem overly concerned.
The way that the current CBA has made teams operate, in Silver’s view, has allowed for more parity and fairness in competition across the board from teams.
“The purpose of the system is ultimately to create competition throughout the league, and from that standpoint, I think the system is working incredibly well,” Silver said.
“The goal isn’t necessarily to have a different champion every year, but we’ve had eight different champions over the last eight years.”
While there aren’t any big changes coming to the CBA or to the NBA game itself, we can expect a lot of big announcements in the next weeks and months regarding the Leonard investigation and expansion.
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