Thought this was worthy of a thread.
View: https://twitter.com/thehoopcentral/status/1394702087309598721?s=21
View: https://twitter.com/thehoopcentral/status/1394702087309598721?s=21
NBA expansion likely
- Thread starter bosockboy
- Start date
Who moves to the East? Two of Memphis, Minnesota, and New Orleans, I'd guess?
The Sonics' branding is still owned by Clay Bennett, right?
EDIT: Sorry. ONE of Memphis, Minnesota, and New Orleans. Duh.
The Sonics' branding is still owned by Clay Bennett, right?
EDIT: Sorry. ONE of Memphis, Minnesota, and New Orleans. Duh.
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Worth questioning whether this really "recoups revenue" or just pulls it forward for a near term win. Expansion is about ownership trading off the fees now for a revenue dilution...forever.
My understanding is that while Bennett currently owns the Sonics' trademark and other rights (so if you buy a Sonics throwback jersey or something, he gets paid), part of the settlement they reached with Seattle on the team's departure was that once Seattle gets a new NBA team, the rights would get transferred back to that new Seattle team. So if Seattle does get a new team, it will most likely be the SuperSonics.
Even living in Tampa, I have no idea how the Raptors' experience went down here. In any event, I believe the Magic have an exclusivity right that extends to the market here, so they'd need to be on board for Tampa to even be considered an option.
No brainer imo.......especially the Vegas market. Silver will likely change the prior ridiculous expansion rules to make these new teams competitive or more from Day One.
This is double good news for New Orleans. It eliminates two competitive markets who could've taken the Pelicans and it allows for them to get out of the Southwestern Division and the West. They HAVE to move to the East (they are east of the Mississippi after all, albeit barely).
More teams = more games = more revenues. Adding 164 regular season games probably doesn't bring in enough revenue to offset the impact of diluting playoff shares, but I would assume the expansion fee is more than the PV of reduced revenue shares going forward - most owners didn't become billionaires by being bad at financial math. Have to think more teams could also eventually lead to expansion of the playoffs - maybe instead of the play-in tourney, you have 7v10 and 8v9 play a best of 3 or best of 5 series.
Yeah, NO moving to the East is a no-brainer.
EDIT--actually, it may in fact be a brainer
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It'll be them or Memphis. I'm sure there will be real politicking over this. Two divisions of eight in each conference. I think there is a pretty logical division in the West (Utah [or Phoenix] and teams East in one, Phoenix [or Utah] and teams West in the other) but not sure there is an easy breakup in the East.
Fair enough, but there is a long way from being bad a math to trading a big cash influx now for a 'debt' likely serviced by someone else down the road. I would bet some of these owners got rich cashing on on decisions that hurt the long term impact of whatever they owned (LBOs anyone?). John Henry was ready to torch the EPL for a quick win and he's good at math.
We'll see if overall revenues grow appreciably, and for the record I'm glad Seattle gets a team, but you are very likely on the money re: expanded playoffs.
I assume the realignment would look like this:
SEA to NW division
OKC to the SW division where they always belonged
LV to the Pacific
Those are the obvious ones...
Now who goes East... two options both to South east...
NO is farther east... but.....
I think it's going to be MEM.
New Orleans fits more into the Texas demo, HOU is right there, etc.
MEM would fit into a more "South' rivalry with Atlanta, CHA etc.
SEA to NW division
OKC to the SW division where they always belonged
LV to the Pacific
Those are the obvious ones...
Now who goes East... two options both to South east...
NO is farther east... but.....
I think it's going to be MEM.
New Orleans fits more into the Texas demo, HOU is right there, etc.
MEM would fit into a more "South' rivalry with Atlanta, CHA etc.
An LBO isn't really analogous... in an LBO, the current owner is selling and therefore doesn't care about how the transaction affects the future value of the asset, only that the sale price today is greater than their view of its value. In this case, a franchise owner still owns the team after the expansion vote and if the value of the expansion payment is less than PV of foregone future revenues then franchise values are hurt. Obviously, estimates of future revenues will vary and maybe a few owners want to try to make a quick buck, but you need 23 teams to vote in favor of expansion.
I doubt it'll ever happen but what about eliminating conferences? There's no reason teams two time zones and the entire country North-South apart need to be in the same conference and there's really no reason they need to be in the same division as is the case with the Northwest (OKC and Minneapolis are almost 2000 miles from Portland!). Four divisions with eight teams each would obviously be the ideal setup, but I see too many travel issues no matter how you configure it. Here's an option at keeping teams close as much as possible:
East: BOS/NY/BK/PHI/WAS/TOR
North: DET/IND/CLE/CHI/MIL/MIN
South: CHA/ATL/MIA/ORL/MEM/NO
Southwest: PHX/DEN/UTA/OKC/DAL/SA/HOU (Phoenix is in Mountain Time for a majority of the regular season so it's not a huge deal)
West: SEA/POR/SAC/GS/LAL/LAC/LV
There would be a home-and-home with every interdivision team (52 games for the E/N/S, 50 for the SW/W) just like currently with the remaining games in division (E/N/S teams play division opponents six times each, SW/W 5-6). Playoffs would be the five division winners and the next 11 (or however many they decide) best records, ideally with everyone seeded solely by record. You'd have cross-country playoff matchups, but I don't think travel should be as much of a priority in the postseason and it's not like there haven't been plenty of matchups in the West where teams aren't anywhere close.
East: BOS/NY/BK/PHI/WAS/TOR
North: DET/IND/CLE/CHI/MIL/MIN
South: CHA/ATL/MIA/ORL/MEM/NO
Southwest: PHX/DEN/UTA/OKC/DAL/SA/HOU (Phoenix is in Mountain Time for a majority of the regular season so it's not a huge deal)
West: SEA/POR/SAC/GS/LAL/LAC/LV
There would be a home-and-home with every interdivision team (52 games for the E/N/S, 50 for the SW/W) just like currently with the remaining games in division (E/N/S teams play division opponents six times each, SW/W 5-6). Playoffs would be the five division winners and the next 11 (or however many they decide) best records, ideally with everyone seeded solely by record. You'd have cross-country playoff matchups, but I don't think travel should be as much of a priority in the postseason and it's not like there haven't been plenty of matchups in the West where teams aren't anywhere close.
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Sure and I agree to the limitations of the lbo analogy, as well as needing significant buy in across all ownership for any change.
I'm simply highlighting that the effort to 'recoup revenue', for some owners, is about the certainty of a big cash payment now vs. the uncertainty of future financial impact. While I'm sure they have quants trying to effectively model that tradeoff, the owners aren't risk neutral decision makers even if such a calculation could be done effectively.
Which are the owners most concerned with how expansion impacts the longer term health of the league, and which are just looking for some $ to pull out of their Shiny Bauble? My believe is some would absolutely kill the goose for a couple gold coins now, but perhaps they are all perfectly rational actors. I'm skeptical of league expansions as $ panacea and see the goals typically as short cited. All that said, but I'm happy for Seattle and hopefully my concerns prove academic.
The city won't pay the bribes. They wouldn't do it for their NFL team, they wouldn't do it for MLS, the only team they'll do it for is the Cardinals.
If we are really thinking about grouping teams together....I'd be moving MN to the East to be with Milwaukee, Chi, Indy, etc. Its nuts that MN isnt in the same division as a team from WI.
That southwestern division is all really nicely clustered. MN is the biggest outlier here. Take them out, replace with Seattle.
I wonder if we are going to be looking at 4 8-team divisions now?
With how few teams come up for sale if you want to buy in you don't really get much of a choice of locales
What's the deal with St. Louis, baka and nighthob?
KC better? Is the arena that hosts the Big 12 tourney big enough?
Louisville or Lexington an option?
KC better? Is the arena that hosts the Big 12 tourney big enough?
Louisville or Lexington an option?
So it's just people are scared he'll leave to go there, and nothing else?
Daniel Silna doesn’t have rights to any NBA team in St. Louis, right? Presumably the deal that garnered him and his late brother gobs and gobs of money over the decades included not just folding the team at the time, but also extinguishing any territorial rights?
The Tatum thing is silly, people constantly think players want to play where they are from, and it's almost always not true, most guys would rather play anywhere but home, it brings a ton of extra hassle.
Tatum told Simmons on his podcast something like he wished St Louis had a team so he could play there.
And apparently the nicest fans in the world. Had two friends who was there for the 2004 WS and they arrived with eye black and boxing gloves ready to butt heads with every Cardinal fan following our historic comeback against the Yankees. Instead, they said that every Cards fan they ran into greeted them with smiles, handshakes and sincere congratulations on the comeback. It was culture shock after a week of Yankee fans and local sports talk radio.
I can tell your friends were white, because they're the most racist fanbase in baseball, which is saying something
Most of the country has shit pizza. Places like Utah and Phoenix were the sites of Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote epic battles in the early 20th century.
The same Simmons that called the Celtics flaming out of play-in tourney. Bill lost his fastball so long ago that you have to be over 40 to know that he ever had one.
If St. Louis had a shitty expansion team I doubt Tatum would want to go there regardless of the fact that’s where he’s from. I guess maybe if St. Louis assembled a surrounding team better or at least as good as the Celtics at the time Tatum was making the decision, maybe it’s an issue but there are so many variables that would come into play before that would happen it’s probably not even worth speculating about.
Simmons was awesome.
And yeah, of course he'll say that. If you're hanging your hat on a kid talking up his hometown in an interview, that's fine.
The St. Louis ABA team wanted to be a part of the NBA merger. The other ABA teams didn’t want them in so a deal was signed that basically guaranteed the owners and their heirs the market in perpetuity (as well as an equal share of the national TV revenues from the ABA teams that were allowed in).
The heirs have zero interest in owning an NBA team, but anyone that wanted to bring an NBA team into the market has to pay them for the privilege. Essentially meaning two expansion fees. So there will never be another NBA team in the market.
I thought the league bought them out recently? Not finding a good link but I saw a blurb about them accepting $500m to end the perpetual rights, dated last summer.
As far as I know the buyout was only in regards the TV revenue (which was 1/7 of the total national revenue received by the Spurs, Nuggets, Pacers, and Nets) and the family retains the right of first refusal on the St. Louis market. I’d be happy to know that that’s incorrect and that a team could move into St. Louis without having to pay the Silnas ransom money.
According to this piece, Silnas never had rights to the St Louis market. I suppose it was because the Spirits were never part of the ABA merger.
https://www.bizjournals.com/stlouis/stories/2001/02/12/daily6.html
That bought out part—but not all—of the perpetual revenue share.
The Silnas never had territorial rights to St. Louis with respect to the NBA; their sweetheart deal only had 2 prongs:
1. 1/7 of the visual media rights to revenue generated by the Nuggets, Pacers, Nets, and Spurs in perpetuity.
2. Payments for each former Spirits player drafted by an NBA team.
They made about $3 million from #2 and hundreds of millions from #1 (probably over a billion including the buyout).
As Mark Cuban was saying, the owners get a quick cash infusion but each team has to cut up the TV and overall revenue into smaller portions, so it's close a net loss over the long term. They're basically giving themselves a loan and hoping the pie increases so much that the smaller slice will be worth more.
It's a bet on themselves then, which doesn't sound like a bad idea. Given the financial challenges of last year and this year, teams are wanting for cash.