The dust is still settling from an exciting NBA Cup Final in Las Vegas on Tuesday, where the New York Knicks claimed their first hardware of any kind since 1973 with a 124-113 win over the San Antonio Spurs. Still, as entertaining as the hoops were, the biggest side stories from the past week in the desert have had to do with the NBA’s future in the city.
In a press conference ahead of Tuesday’s final, commissioner Adam Silver reaffirmed the league’s position that Las Vegas is still on the table for a team and a decision on domestic expansion would be coming in 2026. Silver’s comments come on the heels of mounting uncertainty that expansion to Las Vegas remained a priority for the league, as well as various reports that the NBA planned to look at other locations to host the Cup Final.
“We have a WNBA team here in Las Vegas in the Aces,” Silver said. “We’ve been playing the Summer League here for 20 years. We’re playing our Cup games here, so we’re very familiar with this market. I don’t have any doubt that Las Vegas, despite all of the other major league teams that are here now, the other entertainment properties, that this city could support an NBA team.
Leaving Las Vegas?
In terms of moving the final, I may be in the minority of folks who actually believe the game belongs in Las Vegas. There’s only one city in the country that presents the glitz and glamour necessary to call itself the Entertainment Capital of the World, and the league is lucky enough that it isn’t an already established NBA market.
In fact, because of Summer League’s presence in the city, it has pretty much become the league’s hub for neutral site events. That’s also why folks around the city are skeptical the NBA would even bother picking Las Vegas for expansion. Well, that and the fact that two more teams in the league would mean a diluted share for the current 30 owners.
“As I’ve said before, domestic expansion, as opposed to doing a new league in Europe, is selling equity in this current league,” Silver said.”If you own 1/30 of this league, now you own 1/32 if you add two teams. So it’s a much more difficult economic analysis. In many ways, it requires predicting the future.”
Only In Las Vegas
Perhaps part of the reason the NBA Cup in Las Vegas hasn’t quite caught on with fans on television is that the atmosphere of a big-event city doesn’t translate through the screen. When you’re in town for an NBA event, it’s not uncommon to run into NBA players at the casino or a restaurant. After the final on Tuesday night, a friend of mine in town for the game ended his evening at the roulette wheel with Jordan Clarkson, just hours after Clarkson was the star of the show.
What other city can give you something like that? The players love it too, and a weekend trip to Vegas to play in front of a celebrity-filled crowd beats spending Saturday night in a cold Midwestern city. I’m sorry, but it’s true. And for all of the rumors of Las Vegas’ demise in the tourism industry, the atmosphere on the Strip when something like the NBA Cup is in town is still everything it has always been made out to be.
Following Sunday Night Football this weekend, Amazon Prime aired a segment on Kevin Hart and Kenan Thompson’s “GoodSports” that took a half-serious look into the downturn in Las Vegas tourism and whether or not it was legit. That segment brought their correspondent to the well-known Sapphire Gentlemen’s Club just off the strip, which apparently had more traffic during the NBA Cup this weekend than the typically packed and star-studded first weekend of Summer League. If there’s any indicator that the NBA Cup brings people to Las Vegas, it’s that.
Another common complaint is that holding the Cup final in Las Vegas makes it harder for fans of teams competing to come on short notice. That would have been solved next year, as there would almost certainly be more buffer time between the semifinals and the championship game with the semifinals being held at the higher seed’s home arena. This is a complaint I’m more sympathetic about, but the reality is that being in a location like Las Vegas is what differentiates these games from the other 82.
The Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans are often mentioned as potential teams that could be relocated to new cities, per @SIChrisMannix
“While expansion is the NBA’s preferred method to get teams in Seattle and Las Vegas, relocation has been discussed, as NBA… pic.twitter.com/AQ9h9iNugM
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) November 4, 2025
Where To Go From Here?
At this point, the signaling from the NBA and various insiders is pointing toward a new location for the 2026 NBA cup final. Ahead of Tuesday’s game, Commissioner Silver floated the idea of hosting the event at a storied college location. I have to say, while that would certainly be a cool event to watch on TV, it would be far more unfeasible to host the traveling global media and it doesn’t solve the traveling issue. If it were to move to a neutral site other than Las Vegas, I would honestly like to see it played in an international location like London or Paris.
As far as expansion goes, Las Vegas is still one of two cities on the short list. The question now becomes whether or not that shortlist ever gets approved by the owners, or if the owners are too satisfied with their current revenue share to cut off two more slices of the pie. With teams like the New Orleans Pelicans and Memphis Grizzlies in uncertain situations in their respective cities, the possibility of relocation could discourage owners from voting in favor of expansion, thereby putting the selection of a city in the hands of an ownership group rather than the league.
“I think now we’re in the process of working with our teams and gauging the level of interest,” Silver said. “Having a better understanding of what the economics would be on the ground for those particular teams and what a pro format would look like for them, and then sometime in 2026, we’ll make a determination.”
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