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Gary Payton unbothered by potential snags for NBA returning SuperSonics in expansion plan. “There’s a lot of talk. The government over there in Seattle is going to be fine. Seattle will be back with Las Vegas, so I’m not really worried about none of what they’re talking about. We’ll work it all out. There’s nothing that’s going to snag them. The ownership with Tod Leiweke and all them, we’re going to be fine. I’m just excited for them to get back. We should’ve never lost it but we’re gonna be back.”
Mike Vorkunov: NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league is speaking with multiple groups in Las Vegas and Seattle about expansion to those cities. He says the board intends to make a decision by the end of 2026. He adds: "It’s not a foregone conclusion, either in one city or both cities."
The arrival of French Gates adds a deep-pocketed investor as the group eyes a National Basketball Association expansion team. NBA owners voted in March to explore adding franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas, which would mark the league’s first expansion in two decades as team valuations soar. Holloway has said her group will pursue the Seattle team, aiming to bring the NBA back to the city after the Supersonics relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 and were renamed the Thunder.
Seattle and Las Vegas are already getting teams, so there’s nowhere else to go. First of all, the league is only exploring expansion. I assume it will come to fruition, but there are plenty of good reasons to pump the brakes, and some owners are going to remain unconvinced that it’s smart to further divide the pie with two more teams. Even if the cities of emeralds and sin get two teams, there are still plenty of large markets that want to get in the game. Nashville and Austin are the two most obvious. The proximity of Austin to San Antonio presents a challenge, but the easy geography and access to an exploding economy may be too much for the rest of the owners to ignore. If the door is even cracked slightly, you’d have to think the Dallas-bred Dundon would leap at the chance to get into his home state’s capital city. Beyond those two, though: Kansas City, San Diego and Vancouver, B.C. make varying degrees of sense. And don’t forget Silver’s desire to push the league into Mexico City someday. That likely won’t be via expansion if the league is sitting at 32 teams.
Kendall has never been one to shy away from the truth, especially when it comes to his time in Seattle playing for Hall of Famer George Karl. If you thought time healed those wounds, think again. Kendall stayed candid: “My time in Seattle? Bittersweet. I did not get along with George Karl. But I loved my teammates; I loved playing with them. We won 63 games. We had a whip. Okay? I thought we were going to win the NBA Championship the first year that I was there. But, unfortunately we got beat by Denver and the next year we played the LA Lakers in the Playoffs and got eliminated. My time with George Karl was bad, we all know now from the stories about George Karl what type of dude he is. I’m not going to hold my tongue about him, I don’t like the guy even still to this day.”
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The NBA has received “signs of interest from multiple investor groups for new teams in Las Vegas and Seattle that the league plans to sell for as much” as $10B, according to sources cited by BLOOMBERG NEWS. The sources said that early indications show Las Vegas is “drawing more interest than Seattle.” A source said that while “no formal bids have been submitted, there’s been substantial outreach from investors.”
Q. Do you have any regrets about your career and your decisions? Patrick Ewing: My only regret is leaving when I did. You know, I played 15 years in New York and you hear the team is better off without him or little rumbles from maybe some of your teammates… Ah, you know, he's you know, he getting too much touches in too much time. So, you know, I just got tired. I got worn down with it. I'm like, man, it's 15 years I'm still hearing the same bullsh*t. just got tired and I'm like, you know what, man? It's time to go. you know, Seattle came, they gave them a great offer, but that's the only regret that I have.
Earlier that summer, the Spurs used a first-round pick on a troubled but talented point guard from Seattle named Dejounte Murray. Having befriended Murray through Seattle’s AAU scene, Johnson was hired in part to help the new rookie acclimate to the NBA. What happened next surprised exactly nobody from Seattle who knew Johnson. He began to rise up the Spurs’ organizational chart, eventually earning a spot as a front-of-the-bench assistant on Popovich’s staff. “You can’t be around Mitch for long without falling in love with him,” Kalina said.
Marc Stein: The only NBA team that has ever fetched 7 billion or more is the Lakers when they were sold last year. If they confirm that there are groups that are solid and willing to bid 7 to 10 billion then yes we are going to get expansion. If the bids don't come in that high, then I think the owners will say no. Because the reason they would be willing to give up a slice of the TV money to let the TV division go from 130th to 132nd is because if again, let's just say two Seattle and Vegas come in at 8 billion each, that is 16 billion divided by 30 and the players get none of it.
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The NBA's board of governors has approved a vote for the league to explore bids and applicants for expansion teams exclusively in Las Vegas and Seattle. All 30 owners voted in favor of exploring Las Vegas and Seattle expansion, sources told ESPN. A bidding process is expected to generate offers in the $7-10 billion range for each team, according to sources. Sources told ESPN last week that the league is targeting the 2028-29 season for the two expansion franchises to start playing.
Silver will hold a news conference later Wednesday to discuss next steps. The league said investment bank PJT Partners has been brought on "as a strategic adviser to evaluate prospective markets, ownership groups, arena infrastructure, and the broader economic implications of expansion." The league will examine Seattle and Las Vegas bids over the next several months, and whether to execute the new franchise purchases in 2026 or in a few years. There will be a potential final vote later this year to finalize the transactions to 32 teams. In both voting rounds, 23 of 30 governors must vote in favor.
The NBA’s Board of Governors is set to meet in New York Wednesday to formally give the league permission to begin the process of selecting potential candidate cities for expansion – with Seattle and Las Vegas the only cities that are expected to be approved at the meeting for formal vetting. Formal vetting for buyers of teams is usually a months-long process involving detailed, forensic examinations of the financial capabilities of potential ownership groups to finance what is expected to be an NBA record-setting expansion fee of as much as $10 billion for each city’s new ownership, according to multiple league executives and industry experts contacted by The Athletic.