Is this the Future of the NBA?

[LogGrad98]

Only chance is to move the team from Utah. Nobody wants to play here. Stockton and Malone don’t grow on trees

Yep, just move all small franchise teams to big cities. Then it would level everything out. Utah, San Antonio, Milwaukee, OKC, New Orleans and Memphis just need to all move to bigger markets. Like maybe add more LA franchises. New York could probably support another one. New England could as well. Florida still has potential, as Miami is huge.

NBA Team Market Size Rankings

Which NBA markets are the biggest and smallest? We ranked every NBA team market from 1-28.

hoop-social.com

Just take anywhere with a metro pop of >5 million and add enough teams to equal 3-4 million pop per team, that brings them into line with most other franchises. By this measure all of these could support another team:

NY/NJ Metro area
LA
Chicago
Dallas
Houston (you could argue San Antonia feeds off this a bit and leave it alone, even though the SA metro area is relatively small)
Washington
Miami

Which Metropolitan Areas in the United States Have the Largest Populations?

Here is a listing of the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, with total population, from the Census Bureau.

www.thoughtco.com

So go in reverse order of current franchise market size maybe. Make these moves:

Old --> New

Memphis --> New York
New Orleans --> LA (maybe San Diego? But that technically isn't as big a metro pop)
OKC --> Chicago
Milwaukee --> Dallas (although you could just move San Antonio to Dallas and keep the Texas theme and move Milwaukee to Chicago keeping with the midwest theme kind of then move OKC to Washington)
San Antonio --> Houston
Utah --> Washington
Indiana --> Miami
Charlotte --> Philly
Portland --> Atlanta
Sacramento --> Phoenix (or maybe Boston/New England since that is nearly the same size and would pull from several other small states there for support)

You could mix and match to keep them close to the same conferences and divisions they are coming from. Then the NBA only has to focus on a few larger population zones rather than back-woods Utah and every player would be cool playing everywhere because it would all be big markets.

What a great idea!! Alienate a big chunk of the US so the teams can be in more favorable places and keep the players happy. The owners will continue to be rich though, so that's a good thing.

 

[D Will Texas]

Yep, just move all small franchise teams to big cities. Then it would level everything out. Utah, San Antonio, Milwaukee, OKC, New Orleans and Memphis just need to all move to bigger markets. Like maybe add more LA franchises. New York could probably support another one. New England could as well. Florida still has potential, as Miami is huge.

NBA Team Market Size Rankings

Which NBA markets are the biggest and smallest? We ranked every NBA team market from 1-28.

hoop-social.com

Just take anywhere with a metro pop of >5 million and add enough teams to equal 3-4 million pop per team, that brings them into line with most other franchises. By this measure all of these could support another team:

NY/NJ Metro area
LA
Chicago
Dallas
Houston (you could argue San Antonia feeds off this a bit and leave it alone, even though the SA metro area is relatively small)
Washington
Miami

Which Metropolitan Areas in the United States Have the Largest Populations?

Here is a listing of the 30 largest metropolitan areas in the United States, with total population, from the Census Bureau.

www.thoughtco.com

So go in reverse order of current franchise market size maybe. Make these moves:

Old --> New

Memphis --> New York
New Orleans --> LA (maybe San Diego? But that technically isn't as big a metro pop)
OKC --> Chicago
Milwaukee --> Dallas (although you could just move San Antonio to Dallas and keep the Texas theme and move Milwaukee to Chicago keeping with the midwest theme kind of then move OKC to Washington)
San Antonio --> Houston
Utah --> Washington
Indiana --> Miami
Charlotte --> Philly
Portland --> Atlanta
Sacramento --> Phoenix (or maybe Boston/New England since that is nearly the same size and would pull from several other small states there for support)

You could mix and match to keep them close to the same conferences and divisions they are coming from. Then the NBA only has to focus on a few larger population zones rather than back-woods Utah and every player would be cool playing everywhere because it would all be big markets.

What a great idea!! Alienate a big chunk of the US so the teams can be in more favorable places and keep the players happy. The owners will continue to be rich though, so that's a good thing.

Vegas

 

[LogGrad98]

Vegas

Too small a market.

 

[Isaiah 1:13]

I’m with Chuck here, subsidizing the bottom feeders with lottery picks is baby popping welfare at its worst. Rebuilding is fine but out and out tanking should not be encouraged. Rudy said it best when he said that losing on purpose builds bad habits.

I remember when an article like this one would be anathema:

Who are the 2023 prospects the Jazz could be tanking for?