Five expansion cities the NBA should consider

The NBA Board of Governors voted unanimously to consider bids from Seattle and Las Vegas as league owners mull expansion to 32 teams. While those two cities remain the obvious front-runners, here are five other cities the NBA should consider if either King City or Sin City doesn't work out — or an existing team needs to relocate.

Vancouver

The biggest city in British Columbia, Vancouver, had an NBA team for only six seasons before the lockout, taxes, a weak Canadian dollar and a new owner led the franchise to relocate. New owner Michael Heisley promised not to move the team when he bought the team in 2000, but the Grizzlies were in Memphis by 2001.

Vancouver is Canada's third-largest metropolitan area with a diverse population and a vibrant film industry. If a city is big enough to host a successful Winter Olympics, it's big enough to support an NBA franchise, especially with the rising number of Canadian stars like MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

St. Louis

St. Louis lost the Hawks to Atlanta back in 1965, but it's still a sports-mad area in the Midwest and a natural rival to existing teams in Chicago and Milwaukee. The St. Louis Cardinals are a wildly successful baseball club and the St. Louis Blues are a perennial contender who won the Stanley Cup in 2019.

Working against St. Louis is that their arena, the Enterprise Center, was built in 1994, though it was renovated in the last decade. St. Louis saw two NFL franchises move to new cities, and it's possible that the NBA's deal with the former owners of the ABA's St. Louis Spirits, which cost the league $800M in total, soured the league on the city.

Kansas City

Another Missouri city, Kansas City, might have a better basketball case than St. Louis. The T-Mobile Center, which opened in 2007, hosts the Big 12 Tournament every year and regularly hosts NCAA Tournament games. The biggest question is whether the basketball-mad fans of the Kansas Jayhawks would extend that fandom to an NBA team.

Mexico City

Logistically, Mexico City could be a hard sell for the NBA, given it's in a separate country where Spanish is the primary language and the closest NBA cities are more than two hours away by plane. Financially, it's a huge opportunity for the NBA.

Mexico City is the largest city in the Western Hemisphere, with a population of nearly 18 million. An NBA franchise could effectively become Mexico's national team. The league put a G League franchise there for the 2021-22 season, which may indicate they're testing the waters for future southward expansion.

San Diego

The eighth-largest city in the United States has had two brief trials with NBA basketball, with both of its franchises moving thanks to the financial situations of their owners.

The San Diego Rockets suddenly moved to Houston in 1971. Eight years later, the Buffalo Braves moved to San Diego and became the Clippers after intentionally weakening their team to get out of their Buffalo lease, selling off past and future MVPs Moses Malone and Bob McAdoo and hurting their chances of success in their new home. Notoriously racist and cheap owner Donald Sterling bought the team in 1981 and immediately tried to move them to Los Angeles, succeeding against the NBA's objections in 1984.

San Diego is a beautiful city with plenty of business support. The San Diego Padres have been drawing more than three million fans. This beach town is a natural fit for the NBA.