You're arguing about whether Mexico City deserves an NBA team. Wrong fight. Las Vegas and Seattle will get franchises before Mexico City does, and the reporting that broke this week lays out exactly why: this is Adam Silver using my city as a pressure tool, and he's the one who should wear it.
At last month's board of governors meeting, Silver reportedly left owners with the impression that a Seattle expansion team was no longer a lock, and he reintroduced Mexico City as a possible destination. The hard news underneath it is thin: a Mexico City-based group reportedly approached the NBA's expansion partner, PJT Partners, about setting up a franchise and building an arena in the heart of the city. That's one phone call to the league's bankers. There's no franchise, no arena, no finalized ownership, and no timeline.
The league knows it. The same reporting flatly calls putting a team in Mexico City "the opposite of ready-made." The NBA's real focus is Las Vegas, and Silver is reportedly trying hard to avoid two expansion teams arriving at the same time. Put those two facts together and it's clear what's going on. If Vegas is the priority and two expansion teams at once is off the table, floating my city the week Seattle's bid needs goosing is a way to make somebody raise their offer.
I live here, and people get one part of this wrong in the other direction. Mexico City is a huge, basketball-hungry market. The Capitanes already play here in the G League, the NBA has run exhibition games in this country for about three decades, and the arena infrastructure is real. The sneering, the safety hand-wringing, the "nobody would want to live there," mostly comes from people who've never spent a week in Polanco or Roma. For the kind of money an NBA star makes, this is a world-class place to live. That part of the case is sound.
None of that makes a team imminent, though. The altitude alone is a real problem the league hasn't solved: this city sits at about 7,350 feet, higher than Denver, the highest venue the NBA currently plays in. You don't wave that away with a press conference. Silver has been doing the Mexico City "someday" routine since at least 2023. Every time serious money is about to move, the name comes back. That's not a coincidence.
This mess is Silver's to own. Mexico City didn't ask for this. Neither did Seattle's bidders, who've waited the better part of two decades to get the Sonics back, or the fans yelling that he needs to go. He chose to reintroduce my city at the exact moment it was most useful to him, and he chose to let Seattle fans wonder again whether their deal is real.
It's shrewd business. It's also a cheap way to treat two fanbases, one of which is mine. Evaluate Mexico City on its own merits, or leave it out of the Seattle negotiation entirely. Silver is doing both at once.
