Gary Payton is doing everything he can to bring an NBA team back to Seattle

Gary Payton is hopeful that Seattle will get their NBA team back sooner rather than later and plans to be a big part of it whenever it happens.

Gary Payton has been talking to NBA commissioner Adam Silver. And yes, Payton is trying to get the NBA back to Seattle. So how often is that conversation happening?

“All the time, all the time,” Payton enthusiastically told FanSided. “He (Silver) is trying his best. Everybody’s gotta understand it’s not that easy to just get a team back. Either we’re gonna have to get a team from somewhere else and relocate them. I don’t think Adam is trying to do that. The next thing is can we do expansion? These the owners have to agree to it. 30 owners have to agree to this.”

Rumors continue to swirl that the NBA will eventually add to two teams — one in Seattle and another in Las Vegas perhaps owned by LeBron James. Seattle has Climate Pledge Arena ready and waiting for an NBA team to join the NHL’s Seattle Kraken  The arena could prove to be the game-changer along with Supersonics history.

“Adam [Silver] has been to the new arena and it’s the best facility in the country right now,” Payton said. “So I think that’s what it is and I think he wants to get an NBA team in there and I think he will.”

The last time the Seattle Supersonics played a game in Seattle was April 13, 2008. The SuperSonics beat Dallas 99-95 led by  Earl Watson’s 21 followed by a rookie named Kevin Durant’s 19. It was their 19th win of a measly 20 at the start of a rebuild that would end up with– Oklahoma City — in the Western Conference Finals three years later and then the NBA Finals the following year.

Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz sold the team away to Clay Bennet from Oklahoma, with the belief that Bennet’s group would keep the team in Seattle.

Gary Payton has deep roots in Seattle

Payton and company are still trying to pick up the pieces.

“This year I got a lot of things going on with Lenny Wilkens. We’re trying to make what we’re doing a weekend to raise and see if the NBA will bring us back,” Payton said. “We’re trying to show them how basketball is going to be. It’s still live out there. You know, they got the Seahawks, they got the Mariners, you got the Sounders, they got Washington and they got the Storm who keep winning WNBA championships, we got a lot of things going on out there. And we got to bring this back because they need basketball and a lot of players, old school players, like the Durants and all them who got drafted by them saying  I want to play in Seattle before I get outta here.”

Payton played his last game as a Supersonic on Feb. 19, 2003, scoring 31 in a win over the Knicks. He was traded to Milwaukee in a five-player deal for Ray Allen. There would be stops in Los Angeles, Boston and Miami before Payton ultimately retired after the 2007 season, winning a championship with the Heat in 2006 alongside Shaquille O’Neal and Dwyane Wade.

Payton’s heart never left Seattle and is still beating strong today.

“I got restaurants out there, I got a shirt company that’s out there and stuff like that and we are going to do a lot,” Payton explained. “I go out there as much as I can because I want these people to keep seeing me keep understanding that when we do get back there to Seattle ( An NBA team) , and I move back there when Seattle comes. We are going to be big again.”

In the meantime, Payton will keep talking as loudly off the court as he did on to help make Seattle NBA happen once again.

Gary Payton has partnered with Hennessy, the Official Spirit of the NBA, who will award $2.5 million dollars, given in $7,500 awards, to nearly 350 Black, Asian and Latinx-owned small businesses across the country. These businesses will receive funding through Hennessy’s Unfinished Business program.