Adam Silver leaves door open for Las Vegas to be home to potential NBA expansion team

At some point, it is inevitable that the NBA will expand to add even more teams and talent to the league. This has been a hot topic of discussion for commissioner Adam Silver and the league office for years. Given all the success the NBA has had with Summer League and the recent In-Season Tournament being held in Las Vegas, they appear to be the first city in line for a possible expansion team.

Silver discussed this topic recently while appearing on The Pat McAfee Show, claiming that Las Vegas is “definitely on our list” of cities that are under consideration for expansion.

“Our summer league, by virtue of taking up the first two weeks of July, has become almost like a franchise in Vegas,” Silver told McAfee on Wednesday. “It's two weeks of basketball at a time of year in Vegas when there's not a lot else going on.”

In addition to hosting Summer League every offseason, Las Vegas also has a successful WNBA franchise, the Aces, who have won back-to-back titles. Whenever NBA expansion is brought up in conversations, Las Vegas is the first city that comes to mind. This is especially true with superstar LeBron James firmly stating that he would like to own an expansion team in Sin City.

As far as when the league could address expansion and the possibility of adding a franchise in Las Vegas, Silver mentioned how the upcoming media rights deals play a factor in their decision-making process.

“I think in terms of expansion to Vegas, what we've said for a while now is [that] we have one more year left on our television deal in the United States after this year. And so, we want to figure out what our media relationships are going to look like, but then we will turn to expansion.

“Vegas is definitely on our list.”

Silver also recently spoke with NBA.com about the idea of expansion and brought up Mexico City as another destination the league is gathering more information about. Earlier this season, the Orlando Magic and Atlanta Hawks played a regular-season game against one another in Mexico City.

The idea of the NBA expanding will most likely be brought up again over the weekend when Adam Silver holds his annual All-Star Weekend press conference with reporters on Saturday night ahead of the All-Star Weekend festivities such as the dunk contest and 3-point contest.