What if ... the NBA expanded?
Who's on the New SuperSonics?
Two months ago I published a piece about the level of talent in today’s NBA, and how it’s supportive of adding one or even two new teams. Here’s what I wrote at the time:
While NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has stated that expansion is not a foregone conclusion, he does expect the owners to vote for a formal exploration at the Board of Governors meeting this month. Now that the Collective Bargaining Agreement deal has been signed, media rights are locked up, and the Celtics (and Lakers) sale price has been agreed to, there are no remaining milestones needed to be hit.
The owners did vote for a formal exploration at that July 15th meeting, but with seemingly little enthusiasm. Silver marked that day as "Day 1” of the in-depth analysis required to make a final decision on expansion, and the attention dedicated to the NBA’s offseason has shifted to the European leagues and a scammy green bank.
The lack of enthusiasm for expansion doesn’t make sense to me. I get that the existing owners would need to split the TV money 32 ways instead of 30, but an expansion fee of $6,000,000,0001 upfront would more than offset that loss, forever - I ran the numbers (thanks time value of money). And that’s before accounting for any incremental interest (viewership, and more sadly but directly monetarily, gambling revenues) new teams could bring into the league.
Maybe the owners are worried about saturation and cannibalization? Does more eyes watching Sonics games mean fewer are watching Knicks games? Probably not. Are they worried the next media deal in 11 years won’t increase as much as it did this time around, or possibly even shrink?2 Possibly, but isn’t that the next owner’s issue?
One thing I think could be deterring owners goes back to basic supply and demand. With two new teams shopping around in the free agent market, demand goes up. Of course supply goes up as well (there would be 30 more roster spots), but that new supply is, almost by definition, less talented than the supply of players currently in the league. The number of mid-level guys, the supply that increasingly matters for roster construction, will stay roughly the same. What happens when demand increases faster than supply? Prices go up.
Essentially, that’s all to say that maybe James Dolan doesn’t want to live in an NBA where he gets into a bidding war with the Sonics over a guy like Jordan Clarkson.
Still, I concluded in my article that there are enough stars - as measured by the stats, the social followings, and the awards - to support at least one, if not two new teams. I then hinted at a mock expansion draft to see how the talent would get distributed.
Despite the unwarranted lack of enthusiasm, friend of the podcast Danny Ball and I couldn’t wait for a more definite expansion announcement to be made. Even though rosters will shift significantly by the time any draft actually happens, we decided to go ahead with our own draft, based on the current NBA landscape.
Some Housekeeping …
… before we begin. We stuck to the guidelines established in the last expansion, namely that each team can protect eight players, and can only lose 1 player. Technically, those eight players have to be under contract for the next season (excluding player options) and rookies don’t need to be protected, but that would lead to funky things like the Hawks not being able to protect Dyson Daniels even though they would surely resign him in advance of a real-life expansion draft, so we ignored that technicality.
Teams will protect the best, youngest players on their rosters. Danny and I had to make some educated guesses at which eight players we think teams would protect, but I must admit that my ball knowledge does not extend all the way to the seventh and eighth rotation guys on the Pelicans. So, I turned to Reddit for guidance, where fan bases were mostly3 helpful in sorting this out. You can see who we ultimately protected here or in the screenshots below.
The Draft
Obviously, Danny of Iconic Sonics, acted as the GM of the Seattle expansion franchise which left me to represent the presumed Las Vegas team, which I nicknamed the Silver Surfers in a poor play on the NHL’s Las Vegas Golden Knights. I gave Danny first pick, and we got under way. We recorded the full back-and-forth for the IconicSonics pod which will be dropping in a few weeks, but if you want to jump to the chase here is where we landed.
Thoughts? Feelings? Emotions? This was trickier than I thought, and we surely made some weird picks. Let us know who you would’ve taken instead.
Full set of protected players, grouped by team:
I spell this out so you can see what a ridiculously large number it is.
Netflix produced it’s first original show, House of Cards, 12 years ago. Who knows what TV will look like in 2036.
As Reddit tends to produce, some replies were extremely helpful while others were extremely cynical. Here are my favorite responses:
Benny is Benny the Bull, the Bulls mascot.
How did Cam Johnson get selected when the Nuggets protected him?