NBA in Vegas nearing a step closer to reality

So, they’re actually going to do it.


Finally, after years of speculation, the NBA’s Board of Governors plan to discuss expansion from the current 30 teams to 32, adding expansion franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle when they meet next Tuesday and Wednesday in New York.

It’s the first of several steps that hopefully culminate with the start of play in 2028-29 for both cities, both which have rich basketball traditions.

It’s an exciting time for NBA fans in both cities. Here in Las Vegas, we’ve seen ourselves as a satellite fan base for the Los Angeles Lakers for decades. Yes, there are pockets of Clippers fans and even Utah Jazz fans — remember, the Jazz called Vegas home for parents of a couple of seasons in the mid-1980s. And every July since 2004, the NBA Summer League attracts hundreds of thousands of fans for its 11-day stay at UNLV’s Thomas & Mack Center and the Pavilion.

Of course, Seattle had, and lost the SuperSonics, who won the NBA championship in 1979 and had done business in the Emerald City from 1967 to 2008 when Clay Bennett moved the franchise to Oklahoma City.

According to a report on ESPN.com, the costs to join the NBA are going to be astronomical, somewhere in the neighborhood of $7 billion to $10 billion for each expansion franchise. That’s a ton of dough just to be part of it. And the current owners want to make sure that that’s the number before they agree to proceed and  turn their current 1/30th of revenue into s smaller piece of the pie of 1/32nd.

Bringing the NBA here to Las Vegas will culminate Oscar Goodman’s dream of pro sports in town. The former mayor went to see then-commissioner David Stern back in 1999 to stump for a franchise for the city. He didn’t get it but Goodman ultimately got the 2007 NBA All-Star Game.

That same trip to New York also included a visit to the NHL and a chat with Gary Bettman. Oscar did a little better there as the NHL ultimately approved an expansion team for Las Vegas in 2016 as Bill Foley won the bid as he spearheaded an ownership group that paid a then league-record $500 million for what would  become the Golden Knights.

Whoever heads the NBA ownership group for Vegas would be wise to sit down with Foley before opening for business and pick his brain as to how he was able to make the Golden Knights so successful, both on and off the ice and connect with the community in Southern Nevada.

I would’ve thought Foley himself would be the likely owner of a Vegas NBA team and perhaps he still might. But $10 billion might be out of reach for an individual owner and Foley, who kiddingly refers to himself as a benevolent dictator when it comes to running his teams, probably doesn’t have pockets deep enough to take on such a financial burden alone. And he probably isn’t willing to be part of any ownership group where he doesn’t have the final say over all decisions, so it means looking elsewhere.

I know LeBron James is interested. So is Shaquille O’Neal. And Magic Johnson recently met with Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo about heading an NBA ownership group in Las Vegas. But none of the megastar players are rich enough to do it alone. They’ll need help.

For Las Vegas, that will be the biggest challenge in this entire expansion process. Who is rich enough to meet the steep price tag? I floated the idea of the Adelson family, which currently owns the Dallas Mavericks, as a possible owner. Of course, it would mean selling the Mavericks first and there has been talk of Mark Cuban looking to buy back the franchise from them. If that were to come to pass and they took on LeBron or Shaq or Magic as investing partners, that could work.

But it’s something to keep an eye on in the months ahead as the league begins the vetting process for expansion.

As for where the team will play, T-Mobile Arena is supposedly going to undergo a facelift. Believe it or not, the facility is going to be 10 years old next month and it probably is time for some upgrades. We’re talking infrastructure, locker rooms, that sort of stuff.

It is more than capable of handling an NBA team. The league has played its NBA Cup championship there. The Lakers are annual preseason visitors at T-Mobile. It hosts college basketball annually and also hosts a couple of WNBA games with the Aces each year. So while it was primarily built for hockey and the Golden Knights, the fact is it is fine as an NBA facility. It can hold up to 20,000 people and it has all the bells and whistles required to do business in the NBA, namely a variety of suite options.

There was talk of other arena projects but those never materialized. If the NBA comes here, its home will be at T-Mobile.

With the construction well underway with the Athletics ballpark and Major League Baseball scheduled to play ball here in 2028, the timing is right for the final piece of the sports puzzle by adding the NBA. Both Las Vegas and Seattle would join an exclusive club of 12 current America cities/metropolitan areas that play host to all four leagues — MLB, NFL, NBA and NHL. And who in Las Vegas thought that was ever possible?

Oscar Goodman, that’s who. He dared to dream big that this gambling town would one day be the Sports Capital of the World. And now, we’re on the precipice of completing the sports superfecta of all four pro sports major leagues inhabiting our city.

Let’s hope it happens. We’ve been waiting a long time for it.