For much of the past decade of NBA basketball, we have seen many teams vie to be the worst. This idea, known as “tanking,” is when a team purposefully fields a bad roster in hopes of receiving high draft picks, and in turn, top-end talent. This strategy became rampant during the 2010s, the most famous example being “The Process” era of the Philadelphia 76ers. However, tanking has almost completely fallen by the wayside in the past few years. Why is that?

There’s a simple answer: the NBA has more talent than it ever has before, and that trend will continue in the coming years. All but four teams in the league are trying to make the playoffs this season, something that would have been unimaginable during the mid-2010s. 

For the first time in my life, almost every team has a promising present or future. Despite another losing season, the Houston Rockets are in a great position building around Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr. While the Indiana Pacers won’t contend for the championship this year, their young starting backcourt of Tyrese Haliburton and Ben Mathurin will be one of the most exciting in the league. Even the San Antonio Spurs have some hope for the future with young players like Keldon Johnson and Jeremy Sochan. In short, every team in the league has a reason to be excited about the next five to 10 years.

For that reason, the NBA must expand. As the player field in the league continues to improve, teams are only going to be more saturated with talent. While more talent is better than less, there’s simply too much to distribute. The worst teams today would destroy their counterparts of five to 10 years ago, and that’s a good thing. 

However, the league needs bad teams. Otherwise, team-building becomes an almost impossible task as it increasingly becomes a crapshoot to create a winning team. Expansion also offers more spots for well-qualified players. We saw during the COVID-19-impacted years that players from the G League and foreign leagues can more than hold their own against NBA talent, and with additional teams, they will get the opportunity to be on rosters permanently.

Based on historical precedent, the league is overdue for new teams. The last time it added a team was in 2004, when the Charlotte Bobcats — today’s Charlotte Hornets — joined the league. Before the current stretch, the league had never gone longer than nine seasons without adding new teams; every time there was such high saturation of talent, the NBA realized and adapted. 

There has already been speculation about how these proposed additions could take place. The most likely expansion teams would be based in Seattle and Las Vegas. Seattle never deserved to lose their team in the first place; the city has always loved basketball, and a large contingent of SuperSonics fans still exists. It’s a no brainer. 

As for the second team, Las Vegas makes the most sense. In the past five years, the NHL and NFL have expanded into Vegas, and the NBA would be wise to follow. The league already organizes the Summer League there every year, and it is a market that the NBA would greatly benefit from tapping into. 

The only problem with adding these two cities is that it would create an imbalance of 17 teams in the Western Conference compared to 15 in the Eastern Conference, but there’s an easy fix to this as well. Moving any one of the Minnesota Timberwolves, Memphis Grizzlies or New Orleans Pelicans to the East to balance the league would make sense geographically while ensuring 16 teams in each conference. 

Expansion would be a boon for the NBA in fandom, revenue and most importantly basketball product. More teams and players in the league means more competitive matchups, more difficult team-building and new rivalries. Expansion is an inevitability. The NBA should do it sooner rather than later.

Tim Brennan is a junior in the MSB. “Around the Association” appears online and in print every two weeks.