NBA Expansion: Why the Timberwolves may soon join the Eastern Conference

There have been many hints made by NBA Commissioner, Adam Silver, about how expansion teams could be coming soon to the league. More specifically, rumors have swirled that Seattle and Las Vegas are the two most likely destinations to gain an NBA franchise in the near future. A fun aspect of this speculation is guessing what fun team names could be selected for the expansion teams, such as the Las Vegas Vultures or the Seattle Sasquatch, among other options.

A topic that gets discussed much less frequently is how these new additions to the league could cause conference realignment within the NBA. The Minnesota Timberwolves are the most likely team that could be shifted to the east if Las Vegas and Seattle join the NBA, and it’s probably in their best interest as well.

Las Vegas and Seattle are both locations that would need to be placed in the Western Conference. Seattle is on Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) and is about as far west as a team can get. Las Vegas is also in the same PDT timezone so they too, would need to be added to the Western Conference. What does this mean for the conference structure?

There is no way that the NBA could function from a structural standpoint with 17 teams in the Western Conference and only 5 teams in the Eastern Conference. Due to this, one of the current teams in the West will likely be forced to switch conferences. The most likely candidate that could be joining the Eastern Conference for better or for worse is the Minnesota Timberwolves and there are a lot of reasons as to why.