The NBA has been circling the conversation of expansion for years. As the NHL, often seen as the NBA's closest comparison as "winter sports" lasting 82 games and playing in arenas, adds teams, the NBA has been thought to been close behind.
The NBA is currently booming, with franchise values skyrocketing and the salary cap rising each year as more and more money pours into the league. With no shortage of marketable stars, things seem primed for the league to move from 30 to 32 teams any year now.
Ever since Adam Silver first stated that the league was considering the idea in December of 2020, he is asked about expansion at nearly every press appearance he makes. He most recently said last week that the board of governors did not discuss expansion at their September meeting but that they would be discussing is "at some point this season".
The NBA last expanded to 30 teams in 2004, when the Charlotte Hornets rejoined the league (after previously moving to New Orleans). The Pelicans were born, the Hornets returned, and the league was now made up of a tidy six divisions of five teams each.
The Toronto Raptors were once an expansion team
Before that, the last time the NBA added two teams at the same time was in 1995. The Vancouver Grizzlies and the Toronto Raptors joined the NBA, moving it up to 29 teams and giving the league some of its best artwork.
One interesting wrinkle of the expansion process is that new teams are not allowed to pick first; because of the outsized impact one player can have on an NBA franchise, awarding a new team the No. 1 pick would be too valuable of a gift. When the Grizzlies and Raptors joined, they picked sixth and seventh, respectively, in the 1995 NBA Draft.
Where interesting moves to prohibitive is that when the Raptors joined, there was also a rule in place for the second draft they would be a part of. Toronto went 21-61, finishing with the third-worst record record in the league, and proceeded to win the draft lottery to earn the No. 1 pick.
Not so fast.
Per the terms of their expansion agreement, the Raptors were not allowed to pick first in the 1996 NBA Draft. They were forced down to the second pick, where they drafted Massachusetts center Marcus Camby. The player they missed out on? Allen Iverson.
The Raptors were not allowed to draft Allen Iverson
Iverson was a phenom at Georgetown University and the unquestioned first overall pick. The Raptors had a decent young point guard of their own in Damon Stoudamire, but there was little chance they were going to pass on Iverson. If they had the first pick, they would have taken Iverson.
The Answer would have changed the face of basketball in Canada, as he did in the United States. He was not just phenomenal on the court, but he established a new wave of basketball culture. Nobody was changing their wardrobe, their music collection or their speech patterns to match Marcus Camby.
That's before acknowledging the Hall of Fame career that Iverson had. He was an 11-time All-Star, seven-time All-NBA selection, a four-time scoring champ and the 2000-01 Most Valuable Player. He also won Rookie of the Year in 1996-97, averaging 23.5 points per game, and would have injected an all-new level of excitement into a young Raptors franchise.
Marcus Camby had a solid career, but the problem is he accomplished those things for other teams. He was a perennial All-Defense selection and led the league in blocks four times; he ranks 13th in career blocks in NBA history. But the Raptors traded him after his second season for Charles Oakley. There's no chance they do that with Allen Iverson.
Expansion teams entering the league, perhaps in Seattle and Las Vegas, have to negotiate such a clause out of their contracts, or they could find themselves forced to give up a future MVP because of a draconian exception. Toronto recovered, drafting Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter the next two years, but they never reached the heights that Philadelphia did with Allen Iverson.
As talk of NBA expansion continues, the Raptors and their fans will continue to be reminded of what could have been.