“There’s so much interest”: NBA commissioner says Montreal is on the league’s expansion radar

With the Canadiens in the middle of a playoff run, sports are at the top of many people’s minds in Montreal.

But hockey may not always be the main draw in town.

Speaking with TSN commentators during a Toronto Raptors playoff broadcast over the weekend, NBA commissioner Adam Silver was asked directly about expansion interest from Canadian markets. And he namedropped a pair of possible candidates.

“We have been over the years,” Silver said. “Whether it’s returning to Vancouver, whether it’s Montreal. There’s so much interest in this country now… Obviously, we started in Toronto and Vancouver.”

Silver was careful to temper expectations, though, since the next round of NBA expansion will likely feature the addition of two new US-based teams.

“It’s not in the immediate plan, but outside of the United States, the most players we have in the NBA now are from Canada. Over time, I’m sure we’ll be looking at other cities in Canada, but not in this round of expansion.”

With the sport being invented by a McGill professor back in 1891, Montreal has extensive ties to basketball. While it’s never had an NBA franchise of its own, in recent years, the city has become the home of Basketball Super League (BSL) and Canadian Elite Basketball League (CEBL) teams in the Toundra and Alliance.

With a metro population of 4.6 million, Montreal is also the largest city in Canada or the United States without an NBA team. Vancouver, who lost the Grizzlies franchise to Memphis in 2001, is next at 3.1 million. Both cities have also been the most frequent stops on the NBA Canada Series. Since 2012, Montreal has hosted eight preseason games and Vancouver six.

Basketball isn’t the only sport Montreal has been pushing to land, though. WatchMojo founder Ashkan Karbasfrooshan has been working publicly on what he calls “Project Peanut,” an effort to bring MLB back to the city in the form of a new Expos franchise. But in pitching potential investors, Karbasfrooshan has noted strong interest from private equity firms with appetite for franchises across multiple leagues, including the NBA.

Montreal, in his view, is a city that could support more than one major pro sports team.

Meanwhile, at a 2023 preseason game at the Bell Centre, Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander crashed a teammate’s press conference wearing a Canadiens jersey and made the same argument, saying “the NBA should put a team here.”

The Bell Centre is regularly held up as one of the city’s strongest assets in any expansion pitch. The 21,000-seat arena already doubles as a world-class NBA venue on preseason nights, and Montreal wouldn’t need to build new infrastructure the way some other expansion markets would.

Silver’s comments stop well short of any kind of commitment. But for a city that has spent years making its case, getting named by the commissioner as a potential market is bound to ignite some hope for hoop lovers.