Adam Silver Talks NBA Expansion to Seattle, Las Vegas, and Potentially Mexico City

Adam Silver clearly can't wait to begin the process of adding new teams to the NBA's current 30-team league.

Silver has been discussing NBA expansion for some time now. He has mentioned on numerous occasions recently that once the NBA New Media Rights deals are done, he will turn his attention to expansion.

Silver appeared on NBC Sports Boston's Celtics Pregame Live at TD Garden on Sunday, ahead of Game 2 of the NBA Finals. He confirmed that the league will consider expanding beyond its current 30 teams after finalizing new media rights deals.

"We have to understand what our long-term media relationships are before we look to expansion. We're in the process of wrapping up those deals now," Silver told co-hosts Tom Giles, Eddie House and Brian Scalabrine. "They're going to be long-term deals. I'm hoping, we're not done yet, but they'll be successful in terms of generating more money for the league and the teams and then we'll be in a position to look at expansion."

Silver said Thursday the league hopes to finalize new long-term agreements in the "relative near term." According to the Wall Street Journal, the NBA is "closing in" on deals with NBC, ESPN, and Amazon totaling in the neighborhood of $76 billion over the next 11 years.

"It's not preordained that we'll expand," Silver said. "I've said it before, you've got to look at the dilution, potentially, of talent, but there's so much great basketball being played around the world. I don't think there's any doubt that over time, this league can sustain two more teams. And there's interest in the market, so once we finish our media deals, we'll turn our attention to that."

"There's been some discussion about going back to Seattle, potentially," Silver confirmed. "Las Vegas, no doubt, is very interested in a team. Mexico City one day.

"But there's lots of other U.S. cities and Canadian cities, frankly, that have reached out to us to tell us they'd be interested."

THE UNDERRATED OPINION
Trust me, Silver wants to expand to Mexico City, the fifth-most-populated city in the world and the largest in North America, with roughly 22 million people living in its metropolitan area. While it would be surprising if the NBA expanded to 3 new cities at the same time, I definitely see Mexico City as a legit second-city contender behind the obvious first choice, which is Las Vegas.