NBA Roundup: Will Las Vegas Get A Team?
The start of the new year brings the expectation that Las Vegas could get an NBA expansion team.
Adam Silver, the league’s commissioner, indicated during the recent NBA Cup games in Las Vegas that the league will decide in 2026 whether to add two franchises, expanding from 30 to 32 teams. He mentioned Las Vegas and Seattle.
"I don't have any doubt that Las Vegas, despite all of the other major league teams that are here now, the other entertainment properties, that this city could support an NBA team,” Silver said, according to ESPN.
Las Vegas Attracts Major Sports Teams
In recent years, as legal gambling and sports betting have spread across the country, Las Vegas tourism officials have worked to rebrand the formerly mobbed-up “Sin City” as the world’s sports capital.
Once shunned by major sports leagues when Las Vegas had a near monopoly on legal gaming, the area in recent years has become home to teams in the NFL (Raiders), NHL (Golden Knights) and WNBA (Aces).
In 2028, the former Oakland Athletics, temporarily playing at minor league ballpark in Sacramento, plan to relocated to a stadium being built on the Las Vegas Strip where the previously Mob-linked Tropicana hotel-casino once stood.
Also, the Formula 1 Las Vegas Grand Prix now is run on a route that includes the Strip and its towering casinos.
While Las Vegas has never had its own NBA team, the Utah Jazz during the early 1980s played some regular-season home games at the arena on the UNLV campus.
Seattle has had its own franchise, the SuperSonics, named for the area’s aviation industry. The team played in Seattle for more than 40 seasons before relocating to Oklahoma City at the end of the 2007-08 season, becoming the Thunder. Last season, the Thunder defeated the Indiana Paces to win the NBA championship.
Global Game
Silver, the NBA commissioner, also has indicated that international expansion is a possibility at some point. Currently, only one team, the Toronto Raptors, is based outside the U.S. (The Memphis Grizzlies once were located in Vancouver.)
However, the emergence of international stars on NBA rosters over the years is evidence of the league’s global popularity.
Some examples include the NBA’s current leading scorer (the Lakers’ Luka Dončić of Slovenia), leading rebounder (the Nuggets’ Nikola Jokić of Serbia), 2024 Rookie of the Year (the Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama of France) and the last few MVPs.
Below are the league’s MVPs since the 2019-20 season and the countries where they were born:
- 2024-25 — Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Oklahoma City Thunder, Canada
- 2023-24 — Nikola Jokić, Denver Nuggets, Serbia
- 2022-23 — Joel Embiid, Philadelphia 76ers, Cameroon
- 2021-22 — Jokić
- 2020-21 — Jokić
- 2019-20 — Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee Bucks, Greece
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