On Tuesday, the NHL announced its Board of Governors had granted Seattle an expansion team that will join the league for the 2021-22 season. The unnamed team will play home games in a renovated KeyArena, the old home of the Seattle SuperSonics. Construction is beginning soon. Hockey fans in Seattle are obviously ecstatic.
Seattle now has an NHL team. Why are Sonics fans still waiting?
Should the approval of the expansion Seattle NHL franchise give hope that the NBA will soon return to the Emerald City? Yes ... and no.
Getty Images / SB Nation illustration
But what about Sonics fans? This is both cruel and hope-inspiring for them.
That Seattle would get an expansion in hockey before basketball comes back to the Emerald City hardly seems fair to the fans who fought so hard to keep the Sonics. But at the same time, the arrival of the NHL will lead to heavy investment in KeyArena, to the point it becomes a suitable NBA gym again. It also shows that professional leagues are still interested in Seattle, which is something that didn’t need to be said, but it probably nice to hear after Howard Schultz’s betrayal a decade ago.
The fight to bring the Sonics back
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
Seattle has tried to bring an NBA team back to the Emerald City after losing the Sonics in 2008, but has run into roadblock after roadblock. Here’s a timeline of key events.
For even more coverage of Seattle’s basketball scene, check out Sonics Rising.
The NHL will now hold 32 teams, same as the NFL. Major League Baseball and the NBA have 30 each. Many, including me, have suggested that 32 is the more natural size for the NBA, and that Seattle and one other city should receive expansion franchises to make it so. The NBA, led by Adam Silver, continues to resist opening up the league to expansion.
It’s hard to understand why. Seattle is a mammoth, high-wealth market. The Sonics have an enormous ready-made fanbase. This is a revenue-generating machine just sitting idle. There are valid basketball reasons to control growth, but given the high talent level of the league right now, adding two teams wouldn’t be too big a disruption.
In the absence of compelling rationale for refusing to consider expansion, the mind grows wild with cynicism. The vacancy in Seattle and a threat of relocation there, after all, has helped push two cities to help finance new arenas for existing NBA franchises: Sacramento and Milwaukee. The NBA is in the business of seeking public subsidies for private enterprises in the form of arenas, and having such an obvious relocation destination on the table helps persuade less lucrative markets to pay for fancy new gyms at the risk of losing their teams.
If this reflects reality, it is especially cruel to Seattle, which (together with Washington state legislators) refused to fund a new arena in the mid-2000s, leading to Schultz selling the team to a collective of wealthy Oklahomans who lied through their teeth about their intentions and got away free and clear because David Stern let them. Seattle was one of the few cities who refused to play the subsidy game — a view on the right side of history now and in the years to come, I reckon. Directly because of that, they are being used as a cudgel to convince other cities to pony up subsidies. It’s a real knife twist.
Is that why Silver won’t talk about expansion? Is it because he sees a couple of NBA franchises a few years away from serious arena questions (the Memphis Grizzlies in particular) and he wants the threat of Seattle to convince those city councils and state legislatures to fear the wrath of fan voters and bad headlines so much they sign off on generous tax breaks for billion-dollar basketball teams? We have no evidence that is the case. But we don’t have any evidence it’s not the case, either.
But the NHL Seattle team does provide that inkling of hope, moving another chip into Seattle’s considerable pile of reasons it should have an NBA team again. Lucrative market? Check. Lots of potential fans? Check. Lots of high-end corporate sponsors? Check. Arena? Check, thanks to the hockey team.
Plus, odds are some portion of Sonics fans are also hockey fans, or can become hockey fans if it means spending winter evenings back in KeyArena. The NHL franchise would be smart to embrace green in its branding, much like the popular Seattle Sounders MLS franchise, and to lean into becoming a surrogate for Seattleites who aren’t into other major sports.
In the meantime, Silver should have to answer questions about Seattle during every interview, and the other 30 NBA franchisees should be put on the spot about their views on expansion. A decade after the relocation sham, Sonics fans deserve real, clear answers on why Seattle is still waiting to get its basketball team back.
