There's a 1-word answer for why the NBA is slow-walking expansion: greed

Good morning. Expansion will likely not happen this decade because some of the richest humans in the nation don't want to share. Let's basketball.

Last week the NBA Board of Governors took what it deemed a concrete step toward considering league expansion by directing league staff to study it. The league has absolutely already studied it – the league has been studying it for a decade – so really taking the step the Board did in its summer meetings is cover for the fact that the Board – or some big-enough-to-matter subset of it – wants to delay and possibly prevent expansion.

You can tell this is the case because of how Commissioner Adam Silver talked about the work to be done. He's all but saying "don't get your hopes up" to potential expansion markets.

“I think there is a significant step now,” Silver said when asked about the league potentially expanding. “We’re now engaging in this in-depth analysis, something we weren’t prepared to do before. But beyond that … it’s really day one of that analysis. So, in terms of price, potential timing, (it’s) too early to say. And again, I think that assumes the outcome of this analysis. It’s truly a complicated issue.”

His job is to do the bidding of the 30 NBA team owners, and it's clear that he's walking a line because some of those owners don't want to do this, they like the status quo and don't want anyone else into their club. And there is absolutely no other explanation for why those owners don't want to let anyone else in than that those owners are greedy. They have seen revenue skyrocket, they have seen team value skyrocket and they want to keep all that treasure for themselves, even if that's a deeply shortsighted vision of what a 32-team league would offer.

Team sports fandom is at its core a local endeavor, and the United States (and more broadly North America) is massive. The NBA is the second or third biggest pro sports league on the continent, depending on how you feel about calling NCAA Divison 1 FBS football "professional." The league is currently at its most talented and deepest level ever, so roster concerns are as small as they've ever been. The league has one excellent expansion market option in Seattle – with a historic fandom in place, moral weight to right a wrong and oodles of resources – and some good options for a second team, including possibly Mexico City, the seventh largest city in the world, which would open up a remarkable revenue market if it were logistically and politically viable.

NBA expansion is a slam dunk, and has been for a decade as the valuation boom hit amid the implosion of the cable television model and the 2012 collective bargaining agreement that cut player salaries by hundreds of millions of dollars per year. The NBA has looked at it in-depth, and likely knows that it's a low-risk move with high upside in terms of building the league's cultural relevance and revenue even more, and yet, here we are, still slow-walking because James Dolan and some of his peers don't want to share all that money Adam Silver squeezed out of ESPN, NBC and Amazon.

Fans in Seattle, who were screwed over by David Stern and the NBA Board of Governors on a 28-2 vote, deserve to have their team back, especially as the team stolen from them by a greedy oil baron with help from a greedy coffee baron holds championship parades in their new digs. Fans in Vegas or CdM or St. Louis or Kansas City or Norfolk or Louisville or Tampa or Pittsburgh or San Diego or Albuquerque (!) or Vancouver or Montreal or Juneau (go Frost Donkeys) – they would show up for the NBA and extend its tentacles deeper into American culture at a time when American culture is vulnerable and unstable.

Silver has the temerity to say this about the NBA's more pressing focus: creating a European superleague with FIBA. From Hall-of-Famer David Alridge and Mike Vorkunov in The Athletic:

NBA commissioner Adam Silver has, in recent months, softened his public comments on the inevitability of expansion and relayed that the league’s timetable has slowed as it processed sales of the Celtics and Lakers. The NBA has also set its sights abroad and could launch the new European basketball league in the next two to three years.

“I view that as a form of expansion as well,” he said.

This is bulls--t framing by Silver to cover for the greedy owners. The European league does little to nothing for current NBA fans, who are by and large fans of teams. This is a revenue play: the NBA and FIBA are almost entirely cut out of the European club market right now, and they are planning to poach some existing marquee teams from Euroleague and add some new teams in big cities without high-level or successful existing franchises and they are going to print money. It does nothing for existing fans of NBA teams except there will eventually be some global club tournament of some sort they will work to make us care about. Good luck.

There's one other super gross element to the slow-walking, which is that it preserves Seattle as a relocation threat for teams struggling to get local public support for upgraded arenas. The Sacramento, Milwaukee and Minnesota threats were all resolved in the past 12 years, with the Kings' situation directly involving Seattle. New Orleans remains unresolved. Dallas is actually more tied to the Vegas situation than Seattle due to the team's new owners, but the point stands: if the NBA expands to Seattle and another market, existing NBA team owners in non-marquee cities lose their biggest weapon in arguing for local public investment in upgraded arenas.

So essentially after stabbing Seattle fans in the front they are stabbing Seattle fans in back by keeping them team-less to threaten other cities.

These jamokes on the Board of Governors are making money fist over hand over fist and it's not enough. We should call it what it is.

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