Isolated in the West, Wolves Are the Obvious Choice to Move East

The NBA's board of governors will hold a vote next week to expand to 32 teams, with new additions in Seattle and Las Vegas. As part of that expansion, one team from the West would move to the East, with the Timberwolves and Grizzlies mentioned by Shams Charania as the most likely candidates.

The potential move to the East has reignited a long-running debate among NBA fans about which team makes the most sense to move. From our somewhat biased perspective, the Wolves make the most sense due to geographical isolation. Let's break it down.

The argument for either Memphis or New Orleans over Minnesota makes sense when only looking at the geography of all three teams. Minneapolis is further West than Memphis and New Orleans, but when looking at the distance between the three teams and their closest Western Conference team, it's a no-brainer for the Timberwolves to swap conferences.

Just look at the map below. Compared to the rest of the Western Conference teams, Minnesota is on an island. Meanwhile, Memphis and New Orleans are relatively close to each other, as well as the Texas teams and Oklahoma City.

For reference, the nearest Western Conference team to the Timberwolves is the Nuggets at 698 straight-line miles. If you're driving, it's 840 miles between Minneapolis and Denver. Meanwhile, Memphis' closest West rival is New Orleans at 359 straight-line miles (395 driving miles). New Orleans' closest West opponent is Houston at 317 straight-line miles (347 driving miles). It's not even close.

In the current division alignment, Minnesota has around 3,798 miles of one-way air travel to their current Northwest Division opponents. Memphis has around 1,893 air miles between them and their Southwest Division rivals, while New Orleans has 1,623 air miles in the same division.

Minnesota moving to the East into a four-team division with Milwaukee, Chicago, and Indiana drops their total one-way travel down to 1,161 miles.

One of the more common potential division realignments sees Dallas cut out of the Southwest, which would drop Memphis' overall travel down to 1,474 miles, and New Orleans down to 1,182 miles.

That's far more balanced than keeping the Wolves in the West, where, in a division with Oklahoma City, Denver, and Utah, their travel would still be an eye-popping 2,375 miles.

From a competitive balance standpoint, moving Minnesota to the East also makes more sense. Often seen as the overall weaker conference, if the East added the Wolves, they would have another perennial contender join the conference, rather than West cellar dwellers like the Grizzlies and Pelicans.