Bill Simmons is not interested in adding two more teams to the NBA.

The NBA Board of Governors will conduct its first vote related to expansion next week, with Las Vegas and Seattle being the top candidates to receive teams. The first vote, should it receive support from 23 of 30 current franchises, will allow the league to focus on those two markets and begin to conduct a bidding process for each team.

But some in NBA media are coming out staunchly against expansion. NBC analyst Tracy McGrady appeared on The Dan Patrick Show earlier this week and cited tanking and overall poor performance as a reason the league should not add two more teams. “Have you seen the Washington Wizards play? Did you see what Bam did to them? Do we need more of that?” he joked.

Well, it appears as if McGrady has at least one supporter in The Ringer’s Bill Simmons. The “The Book of Basketball” author struck many of the same notes about expansion on a recent episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast.

“This is going to make the league worse.”@BillSimmons on why he opposes NBA expansion pic.twitter.com/NQoL36QbER

— The Ringer (@ringer) March 20, 2026

“Here’s why I don’t want expansion: because we have nine teams that don’t give a sh*t right now in a 30-team league. The last thing we need to do is add two more teams that don’t give a sh*t,” Simmons said. “They either need to fix ‘the don’t give a sh*t’ part about the 82-game season, or they need to relocate two teams and do that as an expansion. I cannot accept, as somebody who loves basketball, I cannot accept two expansion teams, and having 11 tanking teams three seasons from now instead of nine. I just don’t see how that’s a good product, I don’t see how that helps anybody.”

“If they do this, it’s a money grab,” Simmons continued. “And they could say it’s like, ‘more jobs for everybody!’ Okay, cool. This is a money grab. This is going to make the league worse.”

At the end of the day, it is just a math problem. Expanding the league by two teams means the 30-best basketball players in the world not currently on an NBA roster will find their way into the league. Simmons and McGrady think this will lead to a greater portion of the league’s teams to be noncompetitive.

Perhaps they’re right. But the redistribution of talent across the league might actually make more teams viable. Sure, there will always be a bottom tier intent on tanking. But could more teams being in the middle of the pack encourage greater competition for those fighting for spots in the NBA’s play-in games? That’s a possibility, too.

What’s certain is that the overall talent on an NBA roster will, on average, decrease by adding more teams. While that doesn’t necessarily lead to more tanking, it could easily lead to a product that some see as diminished compared to the 30-team league.