At 37 years old, despite the disappointing season of the Los Angeles Lakers, LeBron James still maintains his desire to continue playing basketball. However, he has always had an eye on business. Shareholder of several companies from different sectors, minority owner of clubs such as Liverpool FC or the Boston Red Sox, with his own line of sneakers at Nike and with film productions, his success also accompanies him off the pitch. His latest idea: buy an NBA franchise and set it up in Las Vegas.
This has been expressed in a preview of the new episode of his television program The Shop, which will premiere this Friday on the YouTube channel of his platform, Uninterrupted. "I want to buy a team. I'm sure. I want a team in Las Vegas," he says in this short video posted on his company's social networks and reposted by the player himself.
But one thing is the wishes of one of the biggest stars in NBA history and another is the intentions of the competition and its owners. For LeBron's idea of having a team in Las Vegas to become a reality, there are two options: that he buy one of the 30 franchises that currently make up the league or that the managers agree on an expansion.
The possibility of a new expansion, which increases the number of participating franchises, has been hovering over the NBA for a long time, but the talks have accelerated due to the pandemic. The economic crisis derived from the coronavirus, which seriously affected the competition, pushed Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, to put the idea on the table as a method to alleviate the losses that all the teams were suffering. The inclusion of new franchises, for an estimated fee of $2.5 billion, would bolster the coffers of the other teams.
However, the negotiations did not come to fruition and, recently, Adam Silver denied that he was working on what would be the twelfth expansion of the American competition. The last one occurred in 2004, when the Charlotte Bobcats, currently under the original name of Charlotte Hornets, joined the league.
Anyway, it's not a closed case. Asked a few days ago about the issue, the commissioner was convinced that "at some point this league will expand, but it's not something we're talking about right now." Also, the locations most mentioned as potential new franchise locations, Seattle and Las Vegas, have Adam Silver's stamp of approval: "They're two wonderful markets. We were in Seattle, I'm sorry we're not there anymore. And Las Vegas, where we'll be in our summer league in July, it's proven to be a great sports market as well."
