The NBA continues to resist the idea of expansion despite an obvious location in Seattle and strong candidates in Las Vegas, Mexico City and Kansas City.

"As I’ve said before, expansion is not on our agenda right now. We may turn back to it at some point. And I’ve had this discussion with both Mayor Goodmans (Oscar and Carolyn) in Las Vegas about their desire for us to expand and have said I view us as, in essence, already having a team in Las Vegas because we have a two-week-plus Summer League there every summer, which has enormous economic impact on the city.

"So before the NFL announced they were putting a franchise, before the NHL put in a franchise, the Golden Knights, in Las Vegas, we of course had an All-Star Game in Las Vegas. So we’ve been heavily involved there for a long time.

"Expansion, at least for right now, even to the question earlier about parity, I’m very focused on creating a competitive 30-team league right now. Part of it, in a way it’s quite remarkable that when you have a league with the amount of basketball being played on a global basis and the 450 best players in the world all coming to one league, and understandably people are saying can’t you do more to create more competition among your 30 teams, at least from a competitive standpoint my first reaction isn’t to think, all right, let’s add a 31st team or 32nd team. It is to see what is it we can do system-wise, training-wise, whatever it takes to create more competition within this league.

"But invariably, as I’ve said before, it’s only natural for any business to grow and expand at some point, so we’ll look back to expansion.

"It’s not just Las Vegas. There are lots of terrific markets out there in the United States and some in countries attached to the United States who also have wonderful cities that could potentially house NBA teams. So those are all things we’ll continue to look at."

The NBA last expanded in 2004 with Charlotte, which replaced a franchise that had relocated to New Orleans.