The Las Vegas market has some questions that need to be answered.
The mum’s the word approach to expansion that National Basketball Association Commissioner Adam Silver imposed is gone. The NBA expansion process is supposed to be finished by year’s end with either a yes or no to putting teams in Las Vegas and in Seattle. The Las Vegas sweepstakes has been whittled to three. Nancy Walton Laurie and Bill Laurie, another group that features the former owner of the Milwaukee Bucks franchise Marc Lasry and the third group that features the owner of the National Hockey League Vegas Golden Knights franchise, Bill Foley, and the former owner of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns franchise Jerry Colangelo. There are some reports that the NBA ownership group could sell a franchise to a Las Vegas group for as much as $13 billion.
There seems to be a string attached to the Las Vegas bid. The NBA wants a new arena for the franchise because the city’s 10-year-old arena is not up to NBA standards. The NBA is still doing its due diligence and while the NBA owners want to have a decision by the end of the year, there is still work to be done. The Athletic has reported that the Las Vegas franchise won’t start until 2029 as opposed to 2028. Then there is Seattle. The market has an NBA ready franchise arena but unlike Las Vegas there seems to be just one bidder for a team, Samantha Holloway who is the owner of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken franchise and has control of Seattle’s arena. The NBA might want the losing bidder in Las Vegas to make a run at getting the Seattle franchise. There is no guarantee that the 30 NBA owners will welcome one or two new members to the lodge but there is a lot of money on the table that will go directly into the NBA owners’ pockets with expansion.
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Lenny Wilkens has a statue and a street named after him in Seattle for his contributions to the Seattle SuperSonics
