Culture
As NBA eyes expansion, it sees potential in Mexico City. But is that a realistic option?
MEXICO CITY — Diego, an Uber driver, picked up his client at 10:37 on a Saturday night, behind a crowded basketball arena where an NBA game had just ended.
He traversed dark, tiny alleys on the outskirts of one of the largest, most congested cities in the world. He drove over curbs, slowed to a crawl to avoid damage from crater-sized potholes and, at one point, stopped his car, threw it in reverse and turned a corner backward.
The zigging and zagging ended on a main thoroughfare two miles ahead of the massive traffic jam in front of Arena Ciudad de México. The six-mile ride to the hotel — in the posh Mexico City neighborhood of Polanco, where both the Miami Heat and Washington Wizards were staying for their game — took 46 minutes.
Nick Lagios wasn’t so lucky. Lagios, an American who once worked for the Los Angeles Lakers, is the general manager for one of the two major professional basketball teams based in Mexico City. He hopped in a taxi in the stalled parade of cars after the game. He was also headed to Polanco, where he lives, but it took him three hours to get home.
“Coming and going at this arena, especially if it’s crowded, is an absolute traffic disaster,” Lagios said.
If the NBA eventually puts a team in Mexico City, which commissioner Adam Silver has said is possible, it would be because of the massive potential of the market — including the ability to draw a crowd. And while postgame traffic is far from unusual after an NBA game, 41 home dates of gridlock like this are only one reason to question whether a league expansion to Mexico is viable.
There are plenty of other factors for the league to consider as it weighs potentially expanding to Mexico City. Traffic is definitely a factor, but overcrowding, a complicated geography that could make building a new arena difficult and the socioeconomics of the world’s fifth largest city are other challenges the league will have to consider.
On the same night the Heat and Wizards played in Mexico City, one of the first people Silver bumped into at the arena was Ted Leonsis, owner of the Wizards.
“The first thing he said to me was, we should have a team in Mexico City,” Silver said.
In a wide-ranging interview with The Athletic in Mexico City, some of which was published previously, Silver acknowledged that American cities like Las Vegas and Seattle would likely get a team before Mexico City, and potential expansion south of the U.S. border was probably “many years off.” But he also said expanding to Mexico City would be “more additive because we would be flipping a switch” in a massive, receptive market.
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The NBA held its first exhibition game in Mexico City in 1992, and since, there have been 32 more regular-season or exhibition games in the city. In 2022, the Mexico City Capitanes began playing G League home games in Mexico (the team was started in 2021 and played the first season in the U.S.).
The arena where the Heat and Wizards played, and where the Capitanes have home games, was built for $300 million and opened in 2012. Around that time, the Maloof family was looking to move the Sacramento Kings, and Robert Hernreich, who held a minority stake in the Kings, pushed the family and then-NBA commissioner David Stern to consider Mexico City. Herneich says he even accompanied league officials on a tour of the arena.
“I didn’t fight for it strong enough, and I should have,” Hernreich said. “It has been a great opportunity for 15 years, and for some reason, the NBA (has) not (been) willing to exploit that. I pursued it independently, and Stern would say, ‘Bobby, look elsewhere. We’re not gonna do Mexico City.’”
Under Silver, clearly, that tune has changed.
Vendors sell merchandise ahead of the 2023 NBA Mexico City Game between the Hawks and Magic. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Mexico City is the largest city in North America, with a population of 22 million. Mexico has a population of 130 million and, according to the league’s own research, 32 million NBA fans, including 13 million fans ages 14 to 30.
The NBA has major offices in Mexico City and San Paolo, Brazil. It counts more than 121 million fans across Latin America and the Caribbean and considers Mexico one of its top-five markets in the world for League Pass subscriptions.
Arena Ciudad de México is, by any accounting, an NBA-caliber arena. The concourses are spacious, the scoreboards jumbo, the sound system excellent, and the locker rooms large enough. It’s also a major concert venue for the city.
“I think culturally, just watching the changes that we’ve seen, even over the 30 years that we’ve been playing games here … we went from sort of a novelty to a mainstream sport here,” Silver said. “If we were to bring an NBA franchise here, there’s no question it would ignite and accelerate the growth of the game.”
Jahlil Okafor played in the NBA for six seasons, where he earned more than $22 million in salary, and spent one season with the Capitanes in the G League in 2022-23.
“They told us it was the Beverly Hills of Mexico, and living there, it was,” Okafor said.
Okafor said he and his teammates were put up in a nice apartment complex in Polanco, with glass doors and marble floors, not far from the row of swanky hotels, boutiques and open-air restaurants where the NBA congregates each year during its Global Games series in Mexico City. He was enamored with the food and the culture.
But would Mexico City be a good place for the NBA to put a team? “I’m not sure,” Okafor said. “It was difficult for us to commute around Mexico City just because the traffic is really bad.”
Yes, Mexico City has a traffic problem. According to anthropologist Lachlan Summers, who has studied the city’s traffic, residents of the city lose on average about 6.5 days per year stuck on the clogged highways and main streets. A separate study of Los Angeles traffic said commuters there lose about 3.5 days per year in traffic jams.
But the traffic issue, as it relates to the NBA setting up permanent residence in Mexico City, is more complex than too many cars on the road. It starts with the security of the multi-millionaire players who would live in Mexico City for at least six months of the year.
According to Numbeo, a website that tracks crime rates internationally, Mexico City’s crime rate in mid-2024 of 67.7 crimes per 100,000 residents is the 32nd highest in the world. There were two NBA cities — Detroit and Memphis — with higher crime rates, and Milwaukee and New Orleans are 33rd and 34th on this list.
Mexico City is also, by and large, poorer than major American cities. According to a 2022 study by the Mexican government, the average salary for a Mexico City resident fluctuates between $660 and $720 a month.
“When a lot of people think of Mexico, the first thing they think about is safety and things along the border,” said Lagios, who was general manager of the Capitanes for three years before taking a similar job with Diablos Rojos of Mexico’s top pro basketball league. “But I think, as time goes on, I’d hear other teams were scared about coming here, and then they get here and they love it.”
That’s in part because those visiting teams from the G League stay in Polanco, or as Okafor described, the “Beverly Hills of Mexico City.” It’s also where NBA teams always stay when they play in Mexico, and, if an NBA team were to play in Arena Ciudad de México full time, Polanco would be the most likely option for players to live.
Polanco is geographically close to the arena (again, just six miles), but on game nights, it can feel like you’re driving from Dallas to Houston. The arena is surrounded on three sides by a wall, and there aren’t many parking options other than the attached garage, which has, at most, two exits that both empty onto the same street.
Also, the neighborhood in which the arena is located is dilapidated, likely uncomfortable for wealthy basketball players who would be unlikely to solve the logistics problem of travel time by moving closer to the arena — an issue that could extend to the paying customers.
“The people who can (afford to) pay the cost of NBA tickets, they live far from the arena,” said Othon Diaz, chief executive officer for all of Diablos Rojos’ sports teams. “The area (around the arena) is not the best place — like security, the streets are not so nice.
“You can go to a concert every three or four months, but four to six games a month? That’s a problem.”
If proximity and traffic were barriers for the more affluent residents of Mexico City to attend more than a handful of 41 home games, then NBA pricing could serve as a barrier to those who live closer to the arena, Diaz said.
The average price of an NBA ticket is $94, excluding the price of parking, food and merchandise. A two-hour Uber ride in Mexico City could cost a day’s wage for the average Mexico City resident.
“In the United States, they charge, what, $13 a beer? If I charged $13 for beer, they’d shoot me,” Diaz said.
It’s a risky exercise to compare Diablos Rojos or the Capitanes to a potential NBA team in Mexico City, because both of the existing clubs are playing minor-league basketball. Both teams have enjoyed success but, for what it’s worth, neither is profitable yet.
A look at Arena Ciudad de México, home of the NBA G League’s Capitanes. (Kirby Lee / USA Today)
Diablos Rojos, for example, just completed their first season and won the Liga Nacional de Baloncesto Profesional championship, capping off an outrageously fortuitous 2024 for the Harp family’s sports company.
Earlier this year, the Diablos Rojos baseball club not only hosted the New York Yankees for exhibition games in March but went on to win the Mexican League championship.
Diablos Rojos plays their basketball games in a 5,000-seat venue where the 1968 Olympic tournament was held in Mexico City, Gimnasio Olímpico Juan de la Barrera. Alfredo Harp Helú, who owns Diablos Rojos and is also part owner of the San Diego Padres, and his son, Santiago, who is 24 and vice president of the Diablos Rojos board of directors, want to build a new arena. Not only for Diablos Rojos, but perhaps for an NBA or WNBA team they ultimately lure to Mexico City.
The Capitanes practice at the Mexican Olympic Committee’s old facility, which is well below NBA standards — the rims may not be quite 10 feet in the air, and until recently, there were no locker rooms, former members of the organization said. An NBA or WNBA team would need a new practice facility too.
“Mexico City needs a new arena,” Santiago Harp said. “Even with (Arena Ciudad de México), we need another one. I’m really excited to just have a nice arena. We’re trying to look (at) how big it should be. We might be in some other leagues — now we’re in (LNBP), but we will see the future.”
Mexico City is not only crowded, it is also 7,300 feet above sea level. The population size and geography pose serious challenges when trying to build a massive structure like a new arena. When the Harps built their baseball stadium, which opened in 2019 near Mexico City’s international airport, for $167 million, they had to build it on a concrete slab supported by 155-feet tall pillars, because the land is on top of an ancient lake.
“Other parts of the city are built on top of old volcanic ash,” Diaz said. “The money isn’t the big problem — the place is so hard (to build an arena) because in Mexico City, there isn’t enough space. … But you can’t be sure what it would cost because you won’t know (right away) what the ground is like.”
Nuño Pérez Pla is in his first season as team president for the Capitanes, the third man in four years to hold that job. Pérez has fulfilled more roles for the Capitanes than he can remember, having done everything from serving as chief revenue officer to taking pictures during games along the baseline.
Pérez said the franchise is probably two years away from profitability, as corporate sponsorships continue to rise. The Capitanes received two different business awards from the G League last season, in which the club saw attendance rise by 93 percent from its first year in Mexico City.
“It is, 100 percent, everyone’s job at the Capitanes to showcase the potential of Mexico City, to show the Capitanes deserve to have a permanent place in the G League, and that we have the potential to have an NBA team in this country,” Pérez said.
Capitanes games are on ESPN Deportes, as part of the NBA’s contract with Disney. The Capitanes do not have to pay player salaries — the league does that, as it does for all G League players. Nor does the team make money off concessions; that all goes to the Monterrey-based company that owns Arena Ciudad de México. The Capitanes get the revenues from ticket and merchandise sales inside the arena during their games; undiscounted tickets cost between $15 and $50. The Capitanes average 4,300 fans per game this season.
Pérez said the viability of American cities Seattle and Las Vegas as NBA markets is well known but argued the Capitanes have “demonstrated the potential that Mexico City has.” Silver, the NBA commissioner, said the league would also have to engage the National Basketball Players Association on expansion to Mexico City, to ensure players would accept moving there for half the year.
“The NBA is testing Mexico right now, logistics testing, security testing and business testing to see what is the real potential of Mexico,” Pérez said.
The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov contributed.
(Illustration: Meech Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Pedro Pardo, Emmanuel Dunand / AFP via Getty Images; Adam Hagy, David Dow, Issac Baldizon, Pablo Lomelin / NBAE via Getty Images)
Whatever you do, don’t think of a bird.
Now: What kind of bird are you not thinking about? A pigeon? A bald eagle? Something more poetic, like a skylark or a nightingale? In any case, would you say that this bird you aren’t thinking about is real?
Before you answer, read this poem, which is quite literally about not thinking of a bird.
Human consciousness is full of riddles. Neuroscientists, philosophers and dorm-room stoners argue continually about what it is and whether it even exists. For Wallace Stevens, the experience of having a mind was a perpetual source of wonder, puzzlement and delight — perfectly ordinary and utterly transcendent at the same time. He explored the mysteries and pleasures of consciousness in countless poems over the course of his long poetic career. It was arguably his great theme.
Stevens was born in 1879 and published his first book, “Harmonium,” in 1923, making him something of a late bloomer among American modernists. For much of his adult life, he worked as an executive for the Hartford Accident and Indemnity Company, rising to the rank of vice president. He viewed insurance less as a day job to support his poetry than as a parallel vocation. He pursued both activities with quiet diligence, spending his days at the office and composing poems in his head as he walked to and from work.
As a young man, Stevens dreamed of traveling to Europe, though he never crossed the Atlantic. In middle age he made regular trips to Florida, and his poems are frequently infused with ideas of Paris and Rome and memories of Key West. Others partake of the stringent beauty of New England. But the landscapes he explores, wintry or tropical, provincial or cosmopolitan, are above all mental landscapes, created by and in the imagination.
Are those worlds real?
Let’s return to the palm tree and its avian inhabitant, in that tranquil Key West sunset of the mind.
Until then, we find consolation in fangles.
When the director Rob Reiner cast his leads in the 1986 film “Stand by Me,” he looked for young actors who were as close as possible to the personalities of the four children they’d be playing. There was the wise beyond his years kid from a rough family (River Phoenix), the slightly dim worrywart (Jerry O’Connell), the cutup with a temper (Corey Feldman) and the sensitive, bookish boy.
Wil Wheaton was perfect for that last one, Gordie Lachance, a doe-eyed child who is ignored by his family in favor of his late older brother. Now, 40 years later, he’s traveling the country to attend anniversary screenings of the film, alongside O’Connell and Feldman, which has thrown him back into the turmoil that he felt as an adolescent.
Wheaton has channeled those emotions and his on-set memories into his latest project: narrating a new audiobook version of “The Body,” the 1982 Stephen King novella on which the film was based.
A few years ago, Wheaton started to float the idea of returning to the story that gave him his big break — that of a quartet of boys in 1959 Oregon, in their last days before high school, setting out to find a classmate’s dead body. “I’ve been telling the story of ‘Stand By Me’ since I was 12 years old,” he said.
But this time was different. Wheaton, who has narrated dozens of audiobooks, including Andy Weir’s “The Martian” and Ernest Cline’s “Ready Player One,” says he has come to enjoy narration more than screen acting. “I’m safe, I’m in the booth, nobody’s looking at me and I can just tell you a story.”
The fact that he, an older man looking back on his younger years, is narrating a story about an older man looking back on his younger years, is not lost on Wheaton. King’s original story is bathed in nostalgia. Coming to terms with death and loss is one of its primary themes.
Two days after appearing on stage at the Academy Awards as part of a tribute to Reiner — who was murdered in 2025 alongside his wife, Michele — Wheaton got on the phone to talk about recording the audiobook, reliving his favorite scenes from the film and reexamining a quintessential story of childhood loss through the lens of his own.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
“I felt really close to him, and my memory of him.”
Wheaton on channeling a co-star’s performance.
There’s this wonderful scene in “Stand By Me.” Gordie and Chris are walking down the tracks talking about junior high. Chris is telling Gordie, “I wish to hell I was your dad, because I care about you, and he obviously doesn’t.”
It’s just so honest and direct, in a way that kids talk to each other that adults don’t. And I think that one of the reasons that really sticks with people, and that piece really lands on a lot of audiences, and has for 40 years, is, just too many people have been Gordie in that scene.
That scene is virtually word for word taken from the text of the book. And when I was narrating that, I made a deliberate choice to do my best to recreate what River did in that scene.
“You’re just a kid,
Gordie–”
“I wish to fuck
I was your father!”
he said angrily.
“You wouldn’t go around
talking about takin those stupid shop courses if I was!
It’s like
God gave you something,
all those stories
you can make up, and He said:
This is what we got for you, kid.
Try not to lose it.
But kids lose everything
unless somebody looks out for them and if your folks
are too fucked up to do it
then maybe I ought to.”
I watched that scene a couple of times because I really wanted — I don’t know why it was so important to me to — well, I know: because I loved him, and I miss him. And I wanted to bring him into this as best as I could, right?
So I was reading that scene, and the words are identical to the script. And I had this very powerful flashback to being on the train tracks that day in Cottage Grove, Oregon. And I could see River standing next to them. They’re shooting my side of the scene and there’s River, right next to the camera, doing his off-camera dialogue, and there’s the sound guy, and there’s the boom operator. There’s my key light.
I could hear and feel it. It was the weirdest thing. It’s like I was right back there.
I was able to really take in the emotional memory of being Gordie in all of those scenes. So when I was narrating him and I’m me and I’m old with all of this experience, I just drew on what I remembered from being that little boy and what I remember of those friendships and what they meant to me and what they mean to me today.
“Rob gave me a gift. Rob gave me a career.”
Wheaton recalls the “Stand By Me” director’s way with kids on set, as well as his recent Oscars tribute.
Rob really encouraged us to be kids.
Jerry tells the most amazing story about that scene, where we were all sitting around, and doing our bit, and he improvised. He was just goofing around — we were just playing — and he said something about spitting water at the fat kid.
We get to the end of the scene, and he hears Rob. Rob comes around from behind the thing, and he goes, “Jerry!” And Jerry thinks, “Oh no, I’m in trouble. I’m in trouble because I improvised, and I’m not supposed to improvise.”
The context for Jerry is that he had been told by the adults in his life, “Sit on your hands and shut up. Stop trying to be a cutup. Stop trying to be funny. Stop disrupting people. Just be quiet.” And Jerry thinks, “Oh my God. I didn’t shut up. I’m in trouble. I’m gonna get fired.”
Rob leans in to all of us, and Rob says, “Hey, guys, do you see that? More of that. Do that!”
The whole time when you’re a kid actor, you’re just around all these adults who are constantly telling you to grow up. They’re mad that you’re being a kid. Rob just created an environment where not only was it supported that we would be kids — and have fun, and follow those kid instincts and do what was natural — it was expected. It was encouraged. We were supposed to do it.
They chanted together:
“I don’t shut up,
I grow up.
And when I look at you I throw up.”
“Then your mother goes around the corner
and licks it up,”
I said, and hauled ass out of there,
giving them the finger over my shoulder as I went.
I never had any friends later on
like the ones I had when I was twelve.
Jesus, did you?
When we were at the Oscars, I looked at Jerry. And we looked at this remarkable assemblage of the most amazingly talented, beautiful artists and storytellers. We looked around, and Jerry leans down, and he said, “We all got our start with Rob Reiner. He trusted every single one of us.”
And to stand there for him, when I really thought that I would be standing with him to talk about this stuff — it was a lot.
“I was really really really excited — like jumping up and down.”
The scene Wheaton was most looking forward to narrating: the tale of Lard Ass Hogan.
I was so excited to narrate it. It’s a great story! It’s a funny story. It’s such a lovely break — it’s an emotional and tonal shift from what’s happening in the movie.
I know this as a writer: You work to increase and release tension throughout a narrative, and Stephen King uses humor really effectively to release that tension. But it also raises the stakes, because we have these moments of joy and these moments of things being very silly in the midst of a lot of intensity.
That’s why the story of Lard Ass Hogan is so fun for me to tell. Because in the middle of that, we stop to do something that’s very, very fun, and very silly and very celebratory.
“Will you shut up and let him tell it?”
Teddy hollered.
Vern blinked.
“Sure. Yeah.
Okay.”
“Go on, Gordie,”
Chris said. “It’s not really much—”
“Naw,
we don’t expect much from a wet end like you,”
Teddy said,
“but tell it anyway.”
I cleared my throat. “So anyway.
It’s Pioneer Days,
and on the last night
they have these three big events.
There’s an egg-roll for the little kids and a sack-race for kids that are like eight or nine,
and then there’s the pie-eating contest.
And the main guy of the story
is this fat kid nobody likes
named Davie Hogan.”
When I narrate this story — whenever there is a moment of levity or humor, whenever there are those brief little moments that are the seasoning of the meal that makes it all so real and relatable — yes, it was very important to me to capture those moments.
I’m shifting in my chair, so I can feel each of those characters. It’s something that doesn’t exist in live action. It doesn’t exist in any other media.
“I feel the loss.”
Wheaton remembers River Phoenix.
The novella “The Body” is very much about Gordie remembering Chris. It’s darker, and it’s more painful, than the movie is.
I’ve been watching the movie on this tour and seeing River a lot. I remember him as a 14- and 15-year-old kid who just seemed so much older, and so much more experienced and so much wiser than me, and I’m only a year younger than him.
What hurts me now, and what I really felt when I was narrating this, is knowing what River was going through then. We didn’t know. I still don’t know the extent of how he was mistreated, but I know that he was. I know that adults failed him. That he should have been protected in every way that matters. And he just wasn’t.
And I, like Gordie, remember a boy who was loving. So loving, and generous and cared deeply about everyone around him, all the time. Who deserved to live a full life. Who had so much to offer the world. And it’s so unfair that he’s gone and taken from us. I had to go through a decades-long grieving process to come to terms with him dying.
Near the end
of 1971,
Chris
went into a Chicken Delight in Portland
to get a three-piece Snack Bucket.
Just ahead of him,
two men started arguing
about which one had been first in line. One of them pulled a knife.
Chris,
who had always been the best of us
at making peace,
stepped between them and was stabbed in the throat.
The man with the knife had spent time in four different institutions;
he had been released from Shawshank State Prison
only the week before.
Chris died almost instantly.
It is a privilege that I was allowed to tell this story. I get to tell Gordie Lachance’s story as originally imagined by Stephen King, with all of the experience of having lived my whole adult life with the memory of spending three months in Gordie Lachance’s skin.
Welcome to Great Adaptations, the Book Review’s regular multiple-choice quiz about printed works that have gone on to find new life as movies, television shows, theatrical productions and more. This week’s challenge highlights offbeat television shows that began as comic books. Just tap or click your answers to the five questions below. And scroll down after you finish the last question for links to the comics and their screen versions.
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