The NBA appears to be moving one step closer to expansion.
On Monday, ESPN's Shams Charania reported that the league plans to hold a vote at its board of governors meeting next week "to explore adding expansion teams exclusively in Las Vegas and Seattle." The two expansion teams would be "targeted to start play in the 2028-29 season," according to Charania.
Once the league formally approves expansion, it will begin soliciting bids from interested ownership groups. "There will then be a potential final vote later in the year to finalize the transactions to 32 teams," Charania reported Monday.
From there, attention will turn toward how the expansion teams will fill out their rosters.
How would an NBA expansion draft work?
The NBA's latest collective bargaining agreement does not provide much guidance about how an expansion draft would work. We can use recent history as our guide, though.
When the Charlotte Hornets (then-Bobcats) came into existence ahead of the 2004-25 season, these were the rules in place for their expansion draft:
- Each team could protect up to eight players from being selected.
- Teams could protect players under contract and impending restricted free agents, but they could not protect unrestricted free agents.
- Each team had to leave at least one player exposed even if it didn't have eight players under contract or impending RFAs.
- The Bobcats could select only one player from each team.
If the Bobcats selected a player who was set to become a restricted free agent, that player instead immediately became an unrestricted free agent. Teams could also agree to trades with the Bobcats prior to the expansion draft to convince them not to select certain unprotected players.
According to ESPN's Tim Bontemps and Bobby Marks, the Bobcats were allowed to select as many as 29 players (one from each team), but they wound up choosing only 19. Of those 19, nine were restricted free agents, and only one of them (Tamar Slay) re-signed with the Bobcats that offseason.
If both the Seattle and Las Vegas teams come into existence at the same time, they would likely alternate picks in the expansion draft, with each team getting to select 15 players in total. Whichever team picked first in the expansion draft would likely pick lower than the other in the NBA draft that season.
The Bobcats were allowed to select players in the expansion draft "without regard to the salary cap," although that's a variable that the Seattle and Las Vegas teams will need to be mindful of. The CBA states that in their first year of existence, they will have a salary cap "equal to 66â…” percent" of the normal salary cap that year. They'll still have the same salary floor (90 percent of the salary cap) as the rest of the league, though.
In the second year of their existence, they'll have a salary cap equal to 80 percent of the normal salary cap that year. They'll still have the same salary floor as the rest of the league that year as well.
That would inevitably influence which unprotected players the expansion teams would select. It could also lead to some hilarious decision-making from teams as they create their list of protected players.
Would some teams leave stars unprotected in the hopes of getting off their contracts? That could be a get-out-of-jail-free card for them if so.
What might change in this expansion draft?
The latest CBA does state that if the league does expand, it would make existing teams "make available for assignment to any such expansion teams the player contracts of a certain number of veterans under substantially the same terms and in substantially the same manner that player contracts were made available to the Charlotte expansion team." However, the CBA notes that "any changes shall be subject to the approval of the Players Association, which shall not be unreasonably withheld."
In layman's terms: The league largely plans on maintaining the same expansion-draft format, but the NBPA will get to weigh in as well.
Since two-way contracts hadn't been introduced in 2004 yet, the league and the NBPA will have to determine whether those players are also subject to the expansion draft. If they are, both sides will also have to figure out how to handle two-way players on expiring contracts. They'd presumably go from being restricted free agents to unrestricted free agents, although that's something the league and the NBPA would need to hash out.
The NBA will also need to figure out where both expansion teams fit into the overall NBA draft picture. The Bobcats received the No. 4 overall pick in the 2004 draft, but previous expansion teams were lower in the order.
When the Toronto Raptors and then-Vancouver Grizzlies joined the league in 1995, they were prohibited from winning the No. 1 overall pick during their first four years of existence, according to Spotrac's Keith Smith. The Raptors originally won the 1996 lottery — which would have given them the chance to draft Allen Iverson — but they slid to No. 2 because of that rule and had to settle for Marcus Camby instead.
There'll be plenty for the league and the NBPA to figure out once the expansion teams are officially approved, but past precedent gives them a solid jumping-off point for the expansion draft in 2028.