Adam Silver doesn’t think Seattle is an NBA market, Sonics won’t return anytime soon

Adam Silver has done a lot of things right in his short tenure as NBA Commissioner, but returning a team to Seattle is not on his agenda. 

Ever since the Seattle Sonics were taken from the Pacific Northwest and relocated to the Midwest, fans have been begging for their team back to anyone who will listen to them. There have been compelling arguments made that the Sonics were stolen by the very unlikable Clay Bennett and his Oklahoma investors, but no matter how the relocation of the Sonics happened — it happened.

Fans trying to get the situation resolved by getting a new team in Seattle have been met with resistance the at every turn as it now appears that Adam Silver is working against them in returning basketball to Seattle.

According to the Seattle Times, mayor Ed Murray met with Adam Silver to discuss the possibility of the NBA expanding to include a new Sonics team but he was met with rejection. Basically, Murray went in not knowing how NBA expansion works, asked for the Sonics back and was figuratively handed a giant lollypop before being patted on the head and removed from the building.

That’s not how it actually happened, but the bottom line is Seattle has asked the NBA directly for a team and were told — in s many words — they’re not an NBA expansion market right now.

"“Their official line, and I think they’re being straightforward with me, is a city grabbing a team or a new (expansion) franchise at this point is not, in their mind, something they see happening,’’ Murray said Thursday of his Monday meeting with Silver and other league officials at NBA headquarters in New York City. “They actually expressed to me that they felt expectations in Seattle had been raised that weren’t consistent with what they had been sharing about a path to get there within the next few years.’’"

Silver didn’t directly say that Seattle isn’t an NBA market, but that’s basically the gist of that little explanation to Mayor Murray. Proof of this is seen in the fact that the NBA isn’t actually trying to avoid expansion, rather it’s doing the opposite and has discussed teams in Europe.

That doesn’t mean such a plan will happen either, but the bottom line is that the NBA doesn’t feel like Seattle is an NBA expansion market, otherwise they’d have returned the Sonics yesterday. This is all wrapped up in shenanigans that have to do with a stalled stadium project that is set to expire soon, but the bottom line is that if Seattle was a market that the NBA thought it could thrive in, they’d have returned the Sonics.

It’s not a market able to sustain expansion at the moment as an expansion team needs years of investment to be any good. Even a team that would be taking on the Sonics name would be a new startup business that just so happened to be called the Sonics.

That’s the problem with expanding to Seattle right now and it’s why such a thing isn’t happening. Is it a damn shame — you bet. But is it smart and practical business by the NBA — of course. A team can relocate to Seattle, but an expansion team won’t be coming anytime soon.

[H/T: Seattle Times]

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