Will NBA expansion determine how many more years LeBron James will play?

Once the NBA finalizes its new national media rights deals, it will turn its attention to expansion, which could determine how long LeBron James remains in the NBA.

“Media agreements, it’s been a long process. It’s ongoing and we hope to get it done in a relatively short time frame, and then we’ll move on to expansion,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said during the NBA Finals. “But resorting to expansion doesn’t mean we’re going to announce that we’re now ready to add teams. It means there will be a committee of NBA governors that will focus on this. who are very interested and will go through a process.”
Among the interested markets – and one of the two pioneers in hiring a team – is Las Vegas. LeBron has spoken publicly about wanting to be the face of this franchise. However, the NBA has a rule that an owner cannot be an active player on the team, so where would that leave LeBron? How many more years LeBron will play in the NBA could be influenced by this expansion, ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said in the first take (hat tip Real GM).

“The biggest thing, other than health, that we will see that will determine when LeBron’s career ends will be when the league owners set a timeline on when they will establish the expansion team in Las Vegas. I suspect that once the television rights deals are finalized… they will bring expansion to the table…

“(James) wants to partner with partners to become the face of the franchise in Las Vegas.”

LeBron just signed a two-year, $104 million contract with the Lakers (second year is a player’s option). This could work well with Lebron joining a group starting an expansion team in Las Vegas – the league will take some time to make that decision.

LeBron is a billionaire, but he will need to partner with other richer people to achieve this – the expansion fee for one of the two expansion teams alone could be $4 billion (not to mention all the other upfront costs). LeBron could be the public face of this team, be involved in basketball operations (and the business side) and add that to his post-career resume.

Nothing is set in stone, but this is something to watch for in the future. The league would love to have another former star player as an owner, like Michael Jordan was in Charlotte for many years.