00:00The question, John, moving forward in the NBA is where will they be playing games if teams expand?
00:05There is a possibility that it looks like Las Vegas, who's been the topic of expansion everywhere, baseball, hockey, and
00:12now the NBA.
00:13Once upon a time, Seattle had an NBA team, and it looks like they may be getting one back again.
00:19Yep. Well, they're going to be voting next week on expanding the league up to 32 teams.
00:24And like you said, Vegas and Seattle seem to be the frontrunners, and both of those teams have a history
00:30in sports now.
00:31The Golden Knights in hockey, the Raiders in football, and maybe the Oakland A's will be moving in when it
00:36comes to Vegas.
00:37Public officials in Vegas are really high on sports. They're pushing very hard for an NBA team.
00:42There are even rumors that LeBron James might be part of an ownership group, although he's denying it.
00:47You know, he's a basketball player for now. If he's going to be an owner in the future like Magic
00:51Johnson, we'll see that in the future.
00:54Seattle, they haven't had a team since 2008. Those fans were crazy for legends like Gary Payton and Sean Kemp.
01:02They had Kevin Durant when he was a rookie, and then the team bolted and went to Oklahoma City.
01:08Whatever happened to Oklahoma City? Oh, yeah, they're champions now.
01:12So there's a lot of FOMO going on in Seattle when it comes to basketball.
01:16For the owners, expansion is big business.
01:19They could pocket up to $8 billion for each team that expands, and that would be great for them.
01:25The downside for some owners is that they'd have to split the TV money 32 ways instead of 30 ways,
01:32which means year to year they'd get a little bit less money.
01:34The big problem with expansion comes from the fans.
01:38Fans and other experts who follow the league, they say, hey, we already got a lot of teams in this
01:43league that aren't playing to win.
01:44They're looking for draft choices. They're tanking.
01:47What do we do about that when there's fewer teams contending?
01:50There are a lot of players to go around, but a lot of teams are still looking for next season,
01:53and that creates a lot of these games, especially late in the season when it's hard to get people to
01:58go.
01:59And, yeah, you want to make sure that there's going to be players for you to see.
02:02So it'll be interesting to see what the owners decide next week.
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