Silver became the new NBA commissioner on February 1st after David Stern retired from his 30-year run as the head honcho of the NBA. It was said that one of Silver's top priorities would be to bring an NBA franchise back to Seattle, but he has since put a hold on that once he officially got his new title.
Silver has stated,"Seattle is a wonderful market. It would be very additive to the league to have a team there... but we're not planning on expanding right now, so it's not a function of price."
The NBA is set to begin new negotiations for TV contracts starting this summer. Once that is complete the owners of the NBA will have a better outlook into their own franchises future and what kind of revenue they will bring in from their TV contracts. The negotiations will be based on television and digital rights to NBA content. Once they have that price they will divide it to all the NBA owners, which will let them know exactly how much money an expansion team would take away from their base earnings from those deals.
That number will play a huge role in whether Seattle will be selected to receive an NBA expansion team. What the decision will come down to is, if the owners in the NBA decide the money they can make from Chris Hansen and Steve Ballmer (The two leading the way in bringing an NBA franchise back to Seattle) is enough to make up for the money they would lose by sharing the revenue of the TV deal with another team, then they will reconsider the offer.
Hansen and Ballmer were already willing to invest $800 million towards bringing a team to Seattle. That would have gave each NBA owner $26 million dollars. Compare that to when the last expansion team, Charlotte Bobcats, were brought in for $300 million dollars or $10.3 million to each team.
Another bump in the road for an expansion team will be diluting the talent in the NBA. Silver has said, "I and the owners will look at not only the dilution of economic opportunities with one more partner to divide national and international money but also dilution of talent... Right now some are already making comments about the Eastern Conference, so is it the ideal time to be adding another 15 or 30 players to the league?"
As for now Seattle will have to continue to be used as a pawn for the NBA. Much like Seattle was used in getting Sacramento a new arena, the Milwaukee Bucks are the newest blip on the radar and Silver and the NBA will use relocation to Seattle as leverage to get a new arena built there as well.
Silver met with the Bucks sponsors last September and told them that their current arena, the Bradley Center, was unfit for an NBA team and that they needed a new arena. That caused a stir in Milwaukee, especially with the Bucks owner, 78-year old Herb Kohl, who announced in December that he was looking to sell a portion of the franchise but with one stipulation, he only wanted investors who wouldn't relocate the team.
Not to mention Seattle SuperSonics had the best mascot in the league, Squatch.
Also if you haven't checked out the pictures of what the arena will look like check it out here, Sonics Arena.
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