One topic that has been floating around NBA circles for quite some time is that of NBA expansion.
The league has been holding steady at 30 teams since 2004, and with the league continuing to grow in popularity and revenue, and the talent packed onto all 30 teams extremely high, it makes sense for the league to add another couple of teams into the mix.
It's not a conversation without nuance and disagreement; the league will get an influx of cash from expansion fees at the front end, but then lose a sliver of the overall pie and see the money divided between 32 teams instead of 30.
With expansion comes a lot of questions, not the least of which is how the expansion draft would work. It's one of the most fascinating and painful parts of any expansion process, where new teams are able to reach over and pluck players off of existing rosters.
How would an expansion draft work?
Historically, teams have protected a number up to half of their current roster, but any other players are fair game. There are some more subpoints, like how free agents work and the minimum amount of players being made available, but the final product will likely look something like that.
Who would the Toronto Raptors protect? Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett appear to be locks. Young prospects such as Gradey Dick, Jonathan Mogbo, Ja'Kobe Walter and perhaps Jamal Shead would all make snese to keep as well. Then the question becomes whether the Raptors want to keep Kelly Olynyk or Jakob Poeltl at each's respective salaries. In this new and fictional future, the Raptors chose Olynyk over Poeltl, making Poeltl available in the expansion draft.
That's how ESPN approached the task, at least, making Poeltl eligible to be drafted by one of the two expansion teams, either Seattle or Las Vegas. He is 29 years old and makes more than $20 million over the next few seasons, so Toronto may have been banking on him being left alone. Alas, that was not to be.
The panel handling the expansion draft with ESPN concluded that Seattle and Las Vegas were the two most likely cities for expansion, so Kevin Pelton worked through the expansion draft as Seattle and Tim Bontemps as Las Vegas. The beginning of the draft featured a number of young players, including 2024 pick Johnny Furphy and Toumani Camara.
Then proven veterans started to go off the board, from Dillon Brooks to Collin Sexton and Kyle Kuzma. In fact, the draft went around the league a significant amount, with players such as Harrison Barnes and Grant WIlliams going off the board in the middle of the draft. Each team can only have one player drafted from it, so the maximum length of the draft was 30 picks.
Tim Bontemps at long last drafted Jakob Poeltl with the 18th pick in the draft, stating that he tried to work out a trade with the Raptors to not pick Poeltl, but that he was unsuccessful. That all-but forced him to draft Poeltl, an expensive but proven anchor of the defense. Bontemps then revealed that, given the timeline of his roster, he would be looking to flip Poeltl for assets down the line.
This would free up money on the Raptors’ books but in the process make them a worse team, scrambling to find an option at center. They will more likely find a trade partner who values his impact and certainy more than a rookie.
Poeltl was better than many of the players who went earlier in the draft, but a combination of trades and salary numbers influenced his falling to 18th. It was a fascinating look into what might happen if and when the league does move to expand its number of teams. This time around, Poeltl was the casualty.