Expansion? The NBA should try building more trust in the current product first.
As David Aldridge and Mike Vorkunov recently reported, the league is taking the next step on possible expansion to 32 teams. League governors will vote on March 25 to determine whether to move forward with exploring Las Vegas and Seattle as potential expansion markets.
Momentum seems to be building toward it, but expansion would be a bad idea — at least for now. The league already has too many bad teams. It already has too many bad games.
Show me you can field 30 competitive teams before expanding to 32.
Even with all the talent across the NBA, the league still produces an overwhelming amount of ugly basketball, especially at this point in the season. It’s March Madness for college basketball, but March Sadness for the long list of NBA teams that have already given up. Can anyone outside of Memphis name the Grizzlies’ top five scorers for March?
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Heck, I’m sure not many people outside of Memphis even know that Rayan Rupert, fourth on that list, exists. The list includes Ty Jerome, Jaylen Wells, GG Jackson, Rupert and Javon Small. It’s no shock that the Grizzlies have dropped seven straight games. Entering Tuesday’s games, only the Wizards (11) and Pacers (13) had longer active losing streaks.
I’m not someone who yearns for the days of brutish post-ups and inefficient midrange jumpers. In some ways, I believe the NBA is in a better place than ever. Players are more skilled. They are more athletic. Even most big guys can put the ball on the floor. Some people complain about the style of basketball these days. I love the way many of the best teams play. They move the ball to find open shots. They pressure full-court to wear down opponents. They shoot from all over the court and use the extra space to attack. Many teams these days play the beautiful game.
Still, you can’t watch the bottom third of the league this season and believe the answer is diluting each team further with expansion. To make expansion work, commissioner Adam Silver would need to fix the NBA’s biggest current problems first, including tanking. Since he has shown no ability to do so with 30 teams in the league, he should avoid complicating the process by adding two more teams. Expansion would thin out NBA rosters, some of which are already plenty bleak.
The NBA’s problems were under the spotlight during Bam Adebayo’s recent 83-point outburst. Forget about the shenanigans that took place over the final five minutes of that game. Whether you loved watching his unforgettable outing or thought it was an affront to the sport, he was obliterating a team that has gone out of its way to avoid competing this season.
It’s not necessarily the Wizards’ fault that they have set out to lose games. The NBA rewards the worst teams with extra ping pong balls in the lottery, and this draft class looks like one of the best in a long time. Washington is smart to take advantage of that rule while hoping to add a young talent like AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, Darius Acuff Jr. or Cameron Boozer. But, for the purpose of the on-court product, it stinks that the Wizards traded for Trae Young and Anthony Davis without intending to maximize the time the stars would spend on the court. Davis was expected to miss six weeks with ligament damage in his left hand. Nine weeks later, he hasn’t suited up yet for Washington. He would have helped the Wizards contain Adebayo, but they don’t want to win. Even Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra said as much.
People are used to this in the NBA. They shouldn’t be. Now imagine how things might play out if there were two more teams. Unless the NBA expands the playoffs, which nobody is asking for, that means two more teams that miss the playoffs and, accordingly, two more teams hoping for lottery luck.
Such issues are not unique to the league, but they sure do seem to be more rampant in the NBA. The Jazz were fined in February after sitting key players during the fourth quarters of games. Weeks later, Utah revealed that Jusuf Nurkić, averaging a double-double as the team’s starting center, would miss the rest of the regular season after undergoing nose surgery. Chris Haynes, NBA on Prime’s senior reporter, later reported that Nurkić initially planned to have the procedure done during the offseason but “has a lot going on this summer.”
It would be cooler if all NBA players, and the teams that contribute to these decisions, felt like they had a lot going on during the season, wouldn’t it? Instead, far too many of the nightly matchups feature lesser players. And still, the NBA wants to dilute the product further by adding franchises in Las Vegas and Seattle?
The NBA should address its existing problems first. Find a way to keep the best players on the court more consistently. Eliminate widespread tanking — or at least curb it. The issues won’t be easy to fix (the physical toll of the current game is greater than it ever has been), but Silver needs to restore the competitive integrity of his league.
Too much of the NBA regular season has become a joke already. Night after night, too many teams don’t stand a chance. Prove that the league’s current talent level can sustain competitive games throughout an entire season before adding two more teams that would only increase the difficulty of such a goal.
The NBA will always have bad teams. It is a zero-sum game. For every good team, there will be a bad one. But the losing shouldn’t be flagrantly intentional. The best players should spend more time on the court. And until the NBA finds solutions for those shortcomings, the perception will exist that the league has created an anti-competitive culture.
That perception is holding back a league that could be in a golden era with several all-time greats still producing near the end of their careers, while a new generation grabs the baton.
But, hey, money is loud. I understand the reasons for expansion. Teams would make billions of dollars by adding another couple of teams, courtesy of expansion fees that would not have to be shared with the players – and that would just be the immediate financial benefit. Seattle deserves a team, anyway, and it would be great for SuperSonics fans to be rewarded with one. But expansion should wait until the NBA can sort out how to put a more consistent product on the floor first.
Maybe Silver, who has acknowledged he intends to address the tanking epidemic somehow, can accomplish that while also adding two more teams. The idea of expansion at this time still sounds counterproductive to me.