Bill Simmons Throws Cold Water On Las Vegas, And NBA, Expansion

On his eponymous podcast Sunday night, Bill Simmons took a bucket of cold water and poured it on the idea of the NBA expansion plans. Then he refilled the bucket and held the NBA expansion plans — including the idea of placing a team in Las Vegas — under the water until it was but a memory.

In short: Simmons, who has octopus-like connections throughout the NBA, thinks it ain’t happening.

He broke it down into two parts, with the first — and most pressing — issue being his certainty expansion will not pass muster with the owners. There are 30 NBA franchises, and 23 have to approve any expansion. Simmons is sure NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is going to have problems with nearly half of the owners.

“They don’t have the votes,” Simmons said, in conversation with fellow podcaster/NBA insider Zach Lowe. “I think it got a little testy in the Board of Governors when they were all together last week, with some people like, ‘Why are we doing this? I’m never voting for this. This is stupid. We’re not doing this.’”

Then Simmons went through 13 owners who he believes are either wholly against the idea or would need some serious arm-twisting.

He first broke down the “new” generation of owners, such as the groups that control the Celtics, Jazz, Hornets, Rockets, Suns, and Timberwolves, and how as new (or relatively new) owners, they don’t want to dilute their chances at winning a title.

Then he went into Jim Dolan, the owner of the Knicks who is against it, as well as the new Trail Blazers owner, who Simmons questioned whether he’d want a team two hours away in Seattle.

Then he noted Steve Ballmer, owner of the Clippers, whose net worth is north of $100 billion and couldn’t care less about the proposal for each team to get upward of $500 million if the league expands by two.

“They don’t have the votes. I’m just telling you they don’t,” Simmons said.

Timing off

Simmons was also put off by the timing of the announcement about the expansion plans, as it was leaked to the press last Monday.

“And when my s**t detector started going off — it was a Monday morning news leak, which as we know, Monday morning is always when you put a story out trying to set the tone for the week, and they put it out in a way that made me think this almost seems like they’re testing this out to see what the reaction is,” he said. “Like they’re either trying to convince the fans this is a good idea or they’re trying to convince the votes that they don’t have that this is a good idea. So I do not think they have the votes.”

Simmons also isn’t sold that Seattle and Vegas are slam dunks to get the teams if expansion did happen.

“This is a two-part process where part one is you get the 30 owners together and they have to vote, you need 23 votes to proceed,” Simmons said. “And basically, Silver is going, ‘I want to see what we can get for these two teams. We’ve decided it’s going to be Seattle and Vegas. We haven’t decided if we’re expanding, but let’s see what kind of price we can get for each of those, and then I’ll bring that back to you and we can vote on it.’”

The number floated was $8 billion per team, a figure Simmons thinks is a fugazi.

“I don’t think the owners are going to necessarily vote for it even if they do get $8 billion a team. And if it’s like $5 to $6 billion, they’re definitely not voting for it,” he said. “And I don’t really understand the point of any of this. Why not just be transparent and say, ‘Hey, we’re just curious to see what we get for these expansion teams, this doesn’t mean we’re gonna have expansion.’”