How an NBA Expansion Draft Could Look If Las Vegas, Seattle Are Awarded Bids

Following plenty of murmurs, the NBA will officially discuss expansion at the league’s Board of Governors meeting next week.

According to ESPN’s Shams Charania, the NBA will hold a vote to explore adding expansion teams exclusively in Las Vegas and Seattle, which would aim to begin play in the 2028–29 season. Las Vegas has become one of the hottest targets for an NBA team following the success of the WNBA’s Aces and the NHL’s Golden Knights. The NFL’s Raiders followed suit in 2020, and the MLB’s Athletics are currently transitioning to Las Vegas while in the midst of an extended stay in Sacramento. Las Vegas has also played host to the NBA summer league and the final stage of the NBA Cup.

The Seattle SuperSonics could return to the NBA as part of the expansion, too. The franchise relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 to become the Thunder, leaving a hole in the hearts of Seattle sports fans ever since. In the glory years of the SuperSonics, the team went to consecutive NBA Finals and won their only title in Emerald City in 1979. With the WNBA’s Storm winning four titles since 2004, Seattle has long hoped its NBA counterpart would make a triumphant return.

There’s still work to do before an NBA franchise for the two cities could become official. Next week’s vote would lock in Las Vegas and Seattle as the league’s expansion targets and open the bidding process for the new franchises. From there, the league would hold a final vote to add two more franchises to bump the league’s number up to 32. That would require the approval of 23 of the league’s 30 current teams.

There is serious juice surrounding the movement, which means a potential expansion draft is in play for the NBA for the first time in over two decades. That would shake up the league, although there’s still plenty of player movement and decisions to be made before an expansion draft happens. Here’s everything you need to know about the NBA’s current process to fill rosters for brand new teams.

What are the NBA’s current expansion draft rules?

The current collective bargaining agreement has vague language on what an expansion draft could look like. The CBA states that if the league decides to expand the number of teams during the course of the agreement, existing teams will make a certain number of veteran player contracts available to expansion teams “under substantially the same terms and in substantially the same manner that Player Contracts were made available to the Charlotte expansion Team pursuant to the 1999 NBA/NBPA Collective Bargaining Agreement.”

Changes can be made to the previous terms, which are subject to approval by the NBA players' association. Legal speak aside, that means a potential expansion draft could look different than the most recent example—Charlotte in 2004—though we can still use history as a guide.

Here are the rules from the Charlotte Bobcats expansion draft two decades ago:

Expansion draft takes place prior to the NBA draft.
The Bobcats will select a minimum of 14 players who are under contract or restricted free agents for the 2004-05 season.
The Bobcats may select no more than one player from each team.
The Bobcats can only select players that are left unprotected by an NBA team.
Each of the 29 NBA teams may protect a maximum of eight players on its roster who are under contract or are restricted free agents at the conclusion of the 2003-04 season.
Each of the 29 NBA teams will designate the players on its roster who are eligible for selection by the Bobcats.
Each of the 29 NBA teams must designate at least one player on its roster to be eligible for selection by the Bobcats, even if the team does not have eight players under contract or as restricted free agents for the 2004-05 season.
Any player under contract selected by the Bobcats will immediately be placed on the Bobcats roster.
Any eligible restricted free agent selected by the Bobcats shall immediately become an unrestricted free agent.
Unrestricted free agents are not eligible to be protected nor are they eligible to be selected by the Bobcats.

In the case of Vegas and Seattle, a potential expansion draft would have to look somewhat different, with multiple teams selecting from the same pool. For example, the NBA could keep the rule that states no more than one player from each team can be selected. Or, since there are two teams, the league could bump that maximum up to two players.

In that case, existing teams could be required to designate at least two players eligible for the expansion draft, as opposed to one. In the Charlotte example, teams had to put at least one player in the pool, even if they had fewer than eight players (the maximum amount they could protect) under contract.

It's all still up in the air ... but one thing is for sure—while the NBA is no stranger to movement in the offseason and around the trade deadline, the drama in a possible expansion draft could throw an even bigger wrench into the mix toward the end of the decade.

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