NBA owners could vote on Seattle, Las Vegas expansion next week

The NBA may be getting closer to doing what everyone has expected it to do for years. Namely, expand to Seattle and Las Vegas.

According to Brian Windhorst of ESPN, expansion is expected to be discussed when the league’s Board of Governors meets Monday and Tuesday in New York. There is even a chance team owners will vote on whether to move forward beyond the current 30-team setup.

A vote is not guaranteed, of course. Nothing involving NBA expansion has moved quickly, other than the number attached to the potential entry fee.

Windhorst reports that some teams are projecting a payout of between $500 million and $600 million for each existing franchise. That would put the total expansion fees for two new teams somewhere between $15 billion and $18 billion.

Translation: Owners may suddenly find the idea of adding two teams especially appealing.

Las Vegas has long been viewed as the more expensive of the two markets, while Seattle remains the sentimental favorite. The SuperSonics left for Oklahoma City in 2008, and bringing the NBA back has seemed more like a matter of when than if.

The league has spent recent months vetting potential ownership groups in both cities. Next week could represent the first formal step toward actually awarding franchises. Or it could produce another round of meetings about future meetings. This is the NBA, after all.

Still, when every current owner could receive more than half a billion dollars, the conversation tends to become a little more serious.