Oklahoma City - NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Thursday night that the NBA will discuss expansion at a council meeting in Las Vegas next month, and he believes the league's owners will recommend the topic for formal discussion.

Seaver, speaking at his annual press conference ahead of the first NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Indiana Pacers, hopes to “accept the temperature of the room” at the July meeting and trust that there is enough interest among the owners to take the next step in the process.

"No interest," Silver said. "I'm essentially saying to people from several different cities, 'We're not in this process right now.' I want to be fair to everyone.

Silver said several times in recent months that the NBA has begun shifting its focus to expansion, which has been informal in the league community over the past few years. But he said for the first time on Thursday that he hoped expansion would become a formal discussion point for the league owners’ meeting.

Silver warns that extensions are not certainty.

“I would say the current feeling is that we should explore it,” Silver said. “I don’t think it’s automatic because it depends on how you think about the future of the league.

"As I said before, somehow expanding the equity that is selling the league. If you believe in the league, you don't necessarily want to add partners. On the other hand, we recognize that there are underserved markets in the U.S. and elsewhere - I think there should be markets for NBA teams. Even if we want to expand, we may offer more."

The last NBA expansion came back in 2004. If agreed to the process, Seattle and Las Vegas are considered favorites to gain an extended team.

Silver discusses other key issues:

•The winner of this year's NBA finals will become the seventh consecutive championship in the league, and the longest league has no repeated championships. Some attribute it to changes the league has made in collective bargaining agreements in an attempt to improve the playing field, but Silver said it doesn’t necessarily mean what they mean.

"I can't say I want to imagine that we'll have seven different titles in seven years," Silver said. "I just want to say that the goal isn't necessarily a different title every year. As we said, it's equality of opportunity. Hatting Oklahoma City and Indianapolis, these are two incredibly well-operated franchises that should be here on the verge of being here.

“No matter which team is going to win, if I have to repeat it, I wouldn’t say that this isn’t working because I’m not going to another city to distribute the trophy. I would say that this is the system we want to create, as long as there is a level playing field. Again, we focus on our process, it’s the process of building the team, not the outcome.

•Silver reiterated that the NBA may move to the global format of the All-Star Game in Los Angeles next year, just like the NHL - which was last season - but said that the specific format has not been determined yet.

"I don't think the straightforwardness of the United States and the world is meaningless," Silver said, adding that international players make up 30% of the league, while American players make up 70%. "It's not what they're doing in the NHL either. We might be putting together some different teams."

Silver added: "I think we can play this nationalism. Next year we will move to NBC for the All-Star Game many years ago. We will meet smack in the Winter Olympics game at NBC. Our All-Star Game, our All-Star Game, will stand out next afternoon instead of next night, in Olim.

•Silver shot down the idea of ​​reducing the NBA's 82 regular season games, saying it worked for a number of reasons.

"Money is part of it, no doubt," Silver said. With that said, I really didn't see the benefits of reducing the number of games. People used to say you should reduce the number of games because this reduces a lot of damage. We absolutely have no data to suggest. If so, you'd think your damage in April is more than 10 months of damage. We don't have seasons like you.