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.

Hopeless In Seattle?

Grant M. Haller / Seattle P-I Archives

Now that Steve Ballmer has won the bidding war and is the new, sole owner of the Los Angeles Clippers, what does that mean for Seattle?

It is said that the reason Ballmer won the bidding war was because he promised to pay his bid of $2 billion dollars in cold hard CASH! 

This purchase puts Ballmer above his former boss at Microsoft, Paul Allen, as the richest owner in all major US sports. Allen is worth $16 billion and Ballmer is worth $20.3 billion, well $18.3 billion with his latest acquisition.

This purchase is now the richest ever for a North American professional sports franchise. The Los Angeles Dodgers that were purchased for a record $2.1 billion a couple years back included their stadium; the Clippers purchase contains only a practice facility as real estate.

Ballmer had already declared that he has no intention of moving Clippers if he was to buy the team while he was talking with The Wall Street Journal earlier this month. Ballmer said, "Moving them anywhere else would be value destructive,”

If you can remember back in 2006 when a guy named Clay Bennett purchased the Seattle SuperSonics he had similar intentions as Ballmer, and said he had no intentions of moving the franchise.

One of the members of Bennett's ownership group would later come out to say that the plan was never to purchase the team to keep them in Seattle. The city of Seattle went through ups and downs as the process played out with the legislators, David Stern, Clay Bennett, Howard Schultz, and Greg Nickels all playing a pivotal role in the move to Oklahoma City.

It's highly unlikely that Ballmer would still look to relocate the team but when you're an NBA fan in Seattle you keep the hope in the back of your mind that you will get your team back. I mean if I was to buy a team for $2 billion there is not one person who is stopping me from doing whatever I please with the team, including bringing them to Seattle.

It was just last month that Steve Ballmer and Chris Hansen made a bid for the Milwaukee Bucks, for relocation to Seattle, but former owner Herb Kohl insisted on selling to a group that would keep the team in Milwaukee. 

So you can see why I still keep that little shining light of hope even though people thinking logically about this situation have already concluded that their is no chance of the Clippers making the move to Seattle.

Chris Hansen, Ballmer's former partner in trying to bring a team back to Seattle, released a statement on Friday congratulating Ballmer’s purchase of the Clippers as well as saying, "I would also like to assure Seattle fans that my remaining partners and I remain committed to bringing the NBA back to Seattle."  However, without the deep pockets of a person like Ballmer around it makes the uphill battle even harder.

Maybe Hansen can contact another former Microsoft employee and Seattle-area native, Bill Gates, to help the cause (Wishful thinking, but could you imagine the number he could throw at the NBA!).

Of all the scenarios to bring a team back to Seattle, it looks like the only real hope lies in Ballmer bringing the Clippers to Seattle once their contract with the Staples Center expires, but that won't be until the 2023-24 season.

So don't hold your breath Seattle, we still have a long way to go before we get our Sonics back.

No NBA Team For Seattle... Yet

The new NBA commissioner Adam Silver has decided that now is not the time for an expansion team in Seattle.

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.

Seattle will get their Sonics back eventually. I just hope its sooner rather than later because no NBA in Seattle means the only sport to focus on once football season is over is the Mariners, and nobody wants to do that.

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.

Follow me on Twitter - @therealrikrok89

I hope you enjoyed my posts because I enjoy writing them. 

Thank you for reading and come back for more Sports News & Analysis.
Share it, Like it, Tweet it, Vine it, Instagram, whatever social networking tool you use, spread the word so everyone else has the opportunity to bask in all of this Sports Stats and News!