LAS VEGAS — It’s a start. Slow. Incremental. Not very exciting.

But, technically, if the NBA does eventually return the SuperSonics to their original place and bring the league back to Seattle, it will be here in the desert in the middle of July where it started.

“If” remains the big word there, because there was little indication from NBA commissioner Adam Silver following the Board of Governors meeting on Tuesday that there is strong momentum from the owners for pushing forward the expansion agenda.

Instead, the commissioner said a couple of committees were authorized to start an in-depth analysis with no timeline set on when or if the Board of Governors would proceed.

Silver called it “day one,” which may end up being correct. It also felt like a hollow phrase. “Day one,” at least for Sonics fans, was July 3, 2008, the first day the team no longer called Seattle home. In that sense, if Silver wanted to call Tuesday “day one” it was that multiplied by 17-plus years of waiting.

Within his 35-minute news conference, Silver seemed to provide more reasons why the league won’t expand than any concrete reasons why the league will eventually add teams. That should be concerning. At some point there needs to be a tone of optimism more than pessimism, whether it’s mentioning the concerns of what it would mean to selling equity in the league to his comments in the past few months about the impact of the cuts teams have taken with their local media rights.

Also concerning is the lack of a timeline. No timeline means no deadline and individuals and organizations usually work with focus and diligence if there’s a deadline. No timeline means no accountability and if the owners want to kick the topic down the road another six months or a year there’s nothing keeping them from doing that.

To be fair, the general feeling is Silver wants expansion. But it’s his owners — and now these committees — that ultimately drive the league in whatever direction they will go on this topic.

Let’s analyze more of what Silver said, other whispers we heard and what it could mean for the next steps:

— What Silver said: “Nothing has been predetermined one way or the other, and without any specific timeline.”

— What it means: This analysis on the possibility of expansion isn’t going to move quickly.

Consensus is you need about two years from the announcement of a team being awarded to the actual team playing its first game in order to get everything in place. With that being the belief, we can likely cross off 2027-28 as a potential start date if the league does decide to add a team or teams. The owners could in theory decide at their September meeting which direction it’s going on expansion and possibly make ‘27-28 work, but the feeling in the room following Tuesday’s meeting was this is now a 2028 or 2029 target for a team starting if the league expands.

The in-depth analysis these two committees are going to go through could take six months. It could take nine months. It could take a year. They will be looking at the on-court impacts and the non-basketball reality financial realities. Again, the lack of a timeline allows for this to move at whatever pace they want.

In theory, a decision one way or the other at the Board of Governors meeting next spring or back here next summer appear to be the likely targets.

— What Silver said: “Ultimately, what we’re looking at is first and foremost, how will this impact the existing operation of the NBA, and what is it that we should be doing to continue growing interest in the game of basketball on a global basis.”

— What it means: It sure seems the NBA is going to get its branded product in Europe off the ground before any new teams in North America hit the floor. The league has clearly become more global with the influx of talent and stars from outside its actual footprint. Silver and the league have invested money and cache in their plans for expanding its brand in Europe. It’s a big deal for the league and at the moment seems to overshadow moving forward on doing something domestically.

He noted that while it’s not a substitutional situation, they are intertwined.

“It’s not as if we are sitting there saying, well, if we do something in Europe, we don’t do something in the United States or North America. But the issues are related. There’s no question about it,” Silver said.

— What Silver said: “The city of Portland likely needs a new arena.”

— What it means: That sounds ominous. And familiar.

The NBA wants to stay in Portland and should. Full stop. Whoever buys the Blazers from the estate of Paul Allen needs to make that commitment.

But Silver’s comment is immediate leverage for the league. If they feel Moda Center is past the point of doing planned renovations that were supposed to modernize the 30-year-old arena in time for the 2030 NCAA Women’s Final Four then that has to be a consideration for whoever decides to pursue purchasing the team.

And, unintentionally, there is a pressure point just up the road with a new arena.

Between Silver unexpectedly mentioning the arena issue in Portland and the obvious indications that current owners don’t yet want to cut up the pie from the new media rights revenue about to kick in, it does make one ponder if relocation might be the way the owners eventually push this entire discussion. Not the Blazers but perhaps another franchise that’s struggling.

In that scenario, the league doesn’t have to cut more of its revenue pie and would receive a nice relocation fee to split.

Additionally, the 32nd market might be more of a question than first thought? It’s been long assumed Seattle and Las Vegas are the pair, but Vegas hasn’t been able to get plans for a new arena off the ground and who would own an expansion team there has become uncertain.

— What Silver said: “That’s why it gets fairly complex, because the most difficult issue in terms of thinking about expansion is not looking at the current economics. It’s trying to project out in terms of what the future should be.”

— What it means: Is there a point where the rising valuations of franchises lead the Board of Governors and the league to an expansion fee that is too rich for anyone in Seattle? The Celtics sale was always seen as the benchmark for a potential expansion fee and then the Celtics went for slightly more than expected at $6.1 billion. Then came the Lakers sale, which was not expected to happen for a couple more years, but when a valuation of $10 billion is on the table, who do you not make a deal?

The Lakers sale shouldn’t be part of the calculus when determining an expansion, but a segment of owners might demand that it is. And if it is, does it get to the point where it’s just not smart or feasible to go down that expensive of a path?

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