All-Star Weekend Rekindles Seattle's Forbidden Love Affair With The NBA

As a fan of the NBA it has been a rough eight years since the Seattle Supersonics left town and were moved to Oklahoma City. It has caused a bit of a forbidden love affair for some NBA fans in Washington after the way the NBA treated Seattle sports fans first love, the Seattle Supersonics.

Thankfully we have had our fare share of athletes compete in the NBA out of the great Evergreen State. So when this All-Star weekend came around I had lined up my rooting interests in each contest. Now if it wasn't for last year's #1 overall pick Karl Anthony-Towns, we would have swept All-Star Saturday Night!

Anthony-Towns, who was part of the first group of big men to ever compete in the skills challenge, edged out the Tacoma native and former Washington Husky Isaiah Thomas.

Following that we had the Three-Point contest. Former Washington State Cougar Klay Thompson would out-shoot his Warriors teammate and last year's champion, Steph Curry.

Following the three-point contest was the reason All-Star Saturday Night became the hit that it is today, The Slam Dunk Contest.   

Bothell's very own and defending champion Zach LaVine would battle it out in what will go down as one of the greatest dunk contests in NBA history against the Orlando Magic's AIR'N Gordon. LaVine would repeat as the Slam Dunk champion after a thrilling championship battle that went an extra three rounds.

The great state of Washington has now produced two out of the six repeating NBA Slam Dunk champions (Nate Robinson & LaVine)!

After all the festivities of the weekend were over I was left feeling incomplete. I felt incomplete simply for the fact that I knew that when the season started back up in a few days me and the rest of SuperSonics Zombie nation would be looking from the outside in, once again.

Almost seamlessly from the conclusion of All-Star weekend the rumblings and rumors surrounding the NBA's return would once again be awoken. 

Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times wrote an article over the weekend, found here, regarding how the city officials in Seattle knew of an engineering consultants findings that Key Arena was a viable option to bring the NBA/NHL back to Seattle as long as proper renovations were made. After reviewing this article and listening to Ian & Puck of Sports Radio KJR dissect it themselves, the short of it is that the Key Arena is still a non-starter and that there is no chance Seattle would get a professional team from either the NBA or NHL for Key Arena.

Once again, we are left waiting...

What appears to be our last hope is resting on the shoulders of hedge-funder Chris Hansen and his group that is still looking to build a stadium in SoDo (pictured right). With all the boulders in the way of that actually forming its looking like it may be a long ride before we ever get to enjoy NBA basketball in the city of Seattle again.