The potential growth of the NBA has been a recurring subject of discussion for many years, yet there has been minimal advancement in turning it into a tangible outcome. League head Adam Silver mentioned in July that the league was directed by team proprietors to execute a thorough investigation of its possibilities, implying that we might observe at least one additional team incorporated into the league soon.
Nevertheless, Mavericks part-owner Mark Cuban anticipates that expansion will not transpire for the NBA, at least not in the immediate future. During an appearance on the DLLS Mavs podcast, Cuban detailed a couple of justifications for why he perceives the league’s expansion as impractical.
“The expansion payment is essentially a loan,” Cuban stated. “You lend me, for instance, $6 billion, and I repay that loan. I provide you with 1/31 — since there are currently 30 teams, there will be 31. I receive 1/31 of the television revenue, and then it merely becomes a matter of the duration it requires. Thus, if the television revenue, to use a straightforward figure, is $100 million, and it’s $6 billion, it signifies that in 60 years, the loan will be reimbursed without any interest. So, why further fragment the earnings?”
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Cuban proceeded to clarify the subsequent rationale.
“The second aspect of it is, when you compute the CBA, and when you determine the salary cap, it is now split among 32 teams. … Consequently, if the cap stands at $170 million, but the basketball-related income hasn’t genuinely increased due to the team you added, then if it’s one or two teams, you’re decreasing the cap. Therefore, in a second apron era, the cap decreases, the second apron diminishes, and the teams are in trouble. It simply doesn’t function,” he elucidated.
“So, contemplate if you’re a player, and suddenly you’re a maximum-salary player, but because they introduced two expansion teams, there isn’t as much money to distribute among the players. Thus, the players would need to decide, do we want to accept reduced cap space, or do we desire additional employment opportunities?”
Fundamentally, Cuban is suggesting that by incorporating more teams, everyone must divide revenue in more ways, which may not be something every team desires to do from an ownership perspective. Teams in larger markets are already contributing more basketball-related income than teams in smaller markets and receive less money in return because smaller markets don’t generate as much revenue. Consequently, incorporating more teams — particularly in smaller markets — would imply that teams like the Knicks and Lakers would receive even less money in return.
The identical principle holds from the player’s vantage point. They are already contending with constrained earnings due to the limiting CBA and the second tax threshold. We’ve observed this summer just how circumspect teams are acting with their funds in an endeavor to avoid approaching that second tax boundary. The Celtics, specifically, were trading away players from their championship-caliber lineup in an attempt to evade the penalties associated with being a high-spending entity.
The stringent CBA, along with the potential for expansion in the future, is why Cuban speculates the player’s association will opt out of the existing CBA at the five-year juncture following the culmination of the 2028-29 season with aspirations to renegotiate.
“I wouldn’t be astonished if the players exercise the opt-out clause,” Cuban commented.
While he doesn’t foresee expansion materializing, Cuban would endorse the NBA’s purported intentions to establish a league in Europe.
“That simply constitutes a novel source of revenue, and we are a worldwide sport,” Cuban asserted. “So, I believe that’s a net positive if they can effectively execute it.”
The NBA has sustained an escalating presence in Europe. And considering the abundance of international talent that prevails in the league presently, it is logical to contemplate tapping into that market to a greater extent. If that represents a more financially sound approach, perhaps that relegates the concept of expansion within the United States to the periphery.
