Boston, MA – September 23: Boston Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck, right, and president of basketball … More operations Brad Stevens spoke at a press conference to address the suspension of their head coach Ime Udoka. (Photo by John Tlumacki/The Boston Globe via Getty Images)
Boston Globe via Getty Images
A group led by Bill Chisholm has agreed to purchase the Boston Celtics for a record $6.1 billion, ESPN’s Shams Charania reported Thursday. That price point was right in line with Forbes’ latest valuation ($6.0 billion) of the Celtics from December.
As Forbes’ Justin Teitelbaum and Brett Knight noted in October, the NBA’s new national TV contracts—worth roughly $76 billion over the next 11 years—along with record attendance and sponsorship are causing the value of the league’s franchises to skyrocket. They estimated that no NBA team would sell for less than $3 billion now.
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Now that a sale agreement has been reached for one of the league’s preeminent franchises, the NBA can turn its attention to expansion. Tom Friend of Sports Business Journal reported Thursday that the league “is expected to begin exploring expansion in earnest” in the wake of this sale. ESPN’s Tim Bontemps added that it “could have an impact on the potential timeline” for expansion.
“For months, sources have said that process wouldn’t move forward until there was clarity on Boston’s situation, and where this sale price wound up,” Bontemps wrote. “Now that there is clarity—and at this kind of number—the league could revisit that timeline.”
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver told reporters in September that there “was not a lot of discussion” about expansion at the league’s board of governors meeting, “but only largely not for lack of interest.” Instead, the league office told governors that they weren’t “quite ready” to entertain those discussions.
The board of governors typically meets in the spring as well, so the timing of this sale figures to spark a new round of expansion talks in the coming weeks.
The Expansion Timeline
This past September, Bontemps and ESPN colleagues Kevin Pelton and Brian Windhorst reported that both “league sources and people who are working on forming bidding groups” are aiming to have expansion teams up and running in the 2027-28 season. “Although starting in 2026-27 isn’t impossible, it has become more unrealistic,” they added.
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At the time, they estimated that “a pair of new expansion teams could net the league north of $10 billion combined—meaning every team would receive a check for over $300 million as the new teams come into the league.” Given the NBA’s current rate of growth and the potential markets it could tap for expansion, that might wind up being on the low end.
Prior to the sale of the Celtics, the average value of the league’s 30 franchises had already jumped by 15% within the past year to $4.4 billion, per Forbes. The Golden State Warriors ($8.8 billion), New York Knicks ($7.5 billion) and Los Angeles Lakers ($7.1 billion) all had higher valuations than the Celtics, while the Los Angeles Clippers ($5.5 billion) and Chicago Bulls ($5.0 billion) weren’t far behind.
Once the NBA decides on how many expansion teams to add—it’s widely expected that it’ll add two in this round—cities and ownership groups will begin to place bids. After the league office finalizes the new teams, the next step will be to hold an expansion draft.
The expansion teams will be working with a smaller budget than the rest of the league’s teams for their first few seasons, which will put them at a disadvantage early on. They’ll have a salary cap worth 66.67% of the NBA’s salary cap in their first season and 80% in the second season. In the third year and beyond, they’ll have the same salary cap as every other team.
Contenders For Expansion Teams
Seattle and Las Vegas are considered the “heavy favorites” to land expansion teams, according to John Hollinger of The Athletic. Silver told ESPN’s Pat McAfee last February that “Vegas is definitely on our list.”
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In July, Randall Williams and Kim Bhasin of Bloomberg reported that the “total price tag, including building a new arena, has the potential to hit $7 billion” if the league does award a team to Las Vegas. They added that the group that owns the Seattle Kraken is the “heavy favorite” to land an NBA team if the league expands to Seattle, but “the Vegas team appears very much up for grabs.”
Tim Booth of the Seattle Times noted that David Bonderman, the father of Kraken majority owner Samantha Holloway, was a minority owner of the Celtics prior to this sale. “The sale would divest the Bonderman family from any additional NBA ownership stakes as would be required in order to have ownership in another franchise,” he added.
After news of the Celtics sale broke Thursday, Holloway released a statement hinting at her ownership group’s interest in bringing the NBA back to Seattle.
“We understand that today’s news will pique the interest of NBA fans in Seattle,” Holloway said. “As we have said before, our ownership group is ideally positioned for an NBA team with Climate Pledge Arena and the incredible fans in Seattle, but we will always be respectful of the Commissioner’s process and timeline.”
Bontemps, Pelton and Windhorst reported in September that “the widespread belief among league and team sources” is that “Seattle and Las Vegas are the logical landing points for a pair of new expansion teams,” but other cities could always hop into the mix. They mentioned Mexico City, Montreal, Vancouver, Kansas City and Louisville as other possibilities.
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Once the sale of the Celtics gets finalized, that figures to bring the NBA one step closer to adding a pair of expansion teams, whether in Seattle, Las Vegas or elsewhere.
Unless otherwise noted, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball Reference. All salary information via Spotrac and salary-cap information via RealGM. All odds via FanDuel Sportsbook.
BOSTON (WHDH) – The maker of the online learning platform Canvas has reportedly reached a deal wit the hackers who took down the site last week to get their data back.
The company did not reveal what was given to the hackers in exchange for the return of more than 275 million users’ data, but said they confirmed the data was detroyed.
Canvas was down for several hours last week because of the cyberattack.
The hacking group said nearly 9,000 schools worldwide were impacted, including Harvard University.
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They said they accessed billions of private messages and personal information.
(Copyright (c) 2026 Sunbeam Television. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
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Investigators identified Tyler Brown of Boston as the man who allegedly opened fire on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, leaving two victims with life-threatening injuries.
Middlesex County District Attorney Marian Ryan said Brown fired 50 to 60 shots on the busy road shortly after 1 p.m. Monday.
Two male victims were hit in vehicles, Ryan said. They are in critical condition and fighting for their lives.
A Massachusetts State Police trooper and a civilian with a license to carry a firearm went toward the gunman and fired their weapons at him. Officers treated Brown at the scene, and he was brought to a Boston hospital, where he is in intensive care, according to the district attorney.
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This video shared with NBC10 Boston appears to show a man opening fire at cars on Memorial Drive in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Monday, May 11, 2026.
Authorities have, so far, shared limited information about the suspect.
“Mr. Brown is from Boston, and apparently was in the process of moving here. We understand that Mr. Brown was under the supervision of either the Massachusetts Probation Department or Department of Parole,” Ryan said.
She did not elaborate on why Brown may have been on probation or parole.
“We will address Mr. Brown’s criminal record, if any, at the arraignment,” she said.
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Ryan added that she did not know enough about Brown’s condition to say whether he would be arraigned in court or in a hospital bed. The timing was also not clear.
He will face two counts of armed assault with intent to murder and firearms charges, and “a variety of other charges as we unfold what took place, exactly, and we have a chance to speak to the many, many people who were out there,” Ryan said.
An inbound stretch of Storrow Drive and Soldiers Field Road will be closed each night through August for tunnel repairs, officials announced.
Starting Monday, the closures will begin at 8 p.m. and last until 5 a.m., state officials said.
Road closures begin at North Harvard Street in Allston and stretch along the Charles River Esplanade to Mugar Way in Boston, near the Hatch Memorial Shell, officials said.
Traffic will be detoured into Cambridge over the Anderson Bridge, along Memorial Drive, and then be routed into Boston over the Longfellow Bridge.
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The closures will allow ongoing repairs to the Storrow Drive Tunnel in the Back Bay.The work is the first phase of a two-stage project to extend the lifespan of the tunnel, which carries roughly 50,000 drivers to and from downtown Boston daily.
The outbound portion of the tunnel and accompanying roadways will not be affected.
State transportation officials said changes to the work schedule will be made when necessary to minimize impacts during major local events at TD Garden, Fenway Park, or during the FIFA World Cup and 250th anniversary celebrations scheduled for this summer.
Additional changes may be made without notice due to weather.
Transportation officials have not specified when the closures will end.
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Bryan Hecht can be reached at bryan.hecht@globe.com. Follow him on Instagram @bhechtjournalism.
