The NBA is voting on expansion this week. Two cities. Seattle and Las Vegas. That is the whole list. Pittsburgh is not on it. Pittsburgh is never on it. And I am tired of pretending that is not ridiculous.

Let me make the case nobody in that league office is going to make for us.

Seattle and Vegas Are Fine. They Are Also the Most Boring Possible Answer.

Seattle is a guilt trip with an arena attached. The SuperSonics got ripped out of that city in 2008 and the NBA has spent 17 years trying to figure out how to apologize for it. Climate Pledge Arena is ready. The fans are ready. Great. Give them their team back. Nobody is arguing that.

Las Vegas is the pick the league already made three years ago and is just now writing down officially. Summer League is there every July. The NBA Cup championship has been there three straight seasons. LeBron has been publicly lobbying for a Vegas franchise since 2022. The league has been running a tryout and calling it a tournament. Everybody knows it.

Both picks make sense. Both picks are also the safest, most predictable, least creative answer the NBA could have come up with. And while they are busy picking the two most obvious cities on the continent, Pittsburgh is just sitting there.

PPG Paints Arena Is Already Built. David Stern Already Said It.

Here is a fact that does not get brought up enough. PPG Paints Arena holds 19,100 people for basketball. It opened in 2010. It is downtown. It is ready. Nobody has to break ground on anything. Nobody has to negotiate a public funding deal. The building exists and it is waiting.

And here is the part that should end the debate before it starts. David Stern, the commissioner of the NBA, said in 2013 that PPG Paints Arena was a possible home for an NBA franchise. The commissioner said that. Thirteen years ago. The league’s own leadership looked at Pittsburgh and said yeah, that works. And then nothing happened.

The Cavaliers are two hours away. The Sixers are five. You drop a team in Pittsburgh and you have instant rivalries with two established Eastern Conference franchises before the first game is even scheduled. Cleveland, Philly, Pittsburgh. That rivalry writes itself. The NBA would not have to manufacture anything.

Pitt Basketball Is Already Proving the Market Exists

People who have never been to Pittsburgh love to act like this city does not care about basketball. Come to the Petersen Events Center on a night when Pitt actually has a team worth watching and tell me that again. That building holds 12,500 people and it gets loud.

Pittsburgh does not need to be converted into a basketball city. It already is one. It just has no professional team to follow so all of that energy goes into college ball and sitting at the bar arguing about the Cavs and the Sixers because those are the closest options we have got.

That is actually better than what Las Vegas is walking into. Vegas is starting from zero and hoping the tourists care enough to come back after Summer League ends. Pittsburgh fans are already there. You are not convincing anyone of anything. You are just finally giving them somewhere to go.

The Market Size Argument. Let Us Get Through It.

Yes, Pittsburgh is the 23rd largest media market. Yes, the city did not land a WNBA expansion team recently. People are going to throw both of those at me and I want to address them before they do.

Oklahoma City is a smaller market than Pittsburgh. Memphis is smaller. New Orleans is smaller. The league already decided market size is not a dealbreaker when everything else lines up. So that argument cuts both ways and people need to stop using it like it ends the conversation.

The WNBA thing stings but it is a different financial situation with different ownership economics. And Las Vegas, the city the NBA is absolutely putting a team in, is a smaller TV market than Pittsburgh by raw numbers. The league decided Vegas works anyway because market size is not the only thing that matters.

Pittsburgh has Fortune 500 money. It has Carnegie Mellon and Pitt driving real economic activity. It has a sports culture so locked in that the Steelers season ticket waiting list is a generational heirloom people pass down to their kids. That does not disappear because the city did not land a WNBA franchise.

Pittsburgh Keeps Coming Up Because Pittsburgh Belongs in This Conversation

Every expansion cycle it goes the same way. Fans bring up Pittsburgh. It shows up on every dark horse list. Someone digs up the Stern quote. And then the league picks the safe answer and we reset and do it all again five years later.

I am not saying Seattle should not get its team. I am not saying Vegas is the wrong call. Both of those franchises are going to happen and they will probably do fine.

What I am saying is that Pittsburgh has a ready arena, built-in rivalries, a fanbase that already cares about basketball, and a former commissioner who looked at this city and said it could work. And the league keeps walking right past it like we are not standing right there.

Seattle is getting a team because the NBA owes them one. Vegas is getting a team because the league spent a decade setting it up. Pittsburgh deserves one because the case is real and it has been real for a long time.

The NBA is going to keep acting like it cannot see us. At some point that stops being an oversight and starts being a choice.