NBA should seriously consider moving an NBA team to Seattle

draftbarnes · Post #1 » by **draftbarnes** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:11 pm

Was watching the XFL and it pretty crazy how packed it was for the game in Seattle. NBA should seriously consider moving one of the low attendance teams to Seattle and getting a real fan base out there

Post #2 » by **Goudelock** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:15 pm

*And we go live to CactusJack*

jimmy keys · Post #3 » by **jimmy keys** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:18 pm

Yes, easily. Great city, top 12 media market, growing population, gateway to Asia, great fans, great history, I could go on.

Take your pick between, OKC, Memphis, Milwaukee & New Orleans.

MambaJuice · Post #4 » by **MambaJuice** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:21 pm

Pelicans make sense. Maybe the Kings. Can't picture OKC moving back to Seattle. Hornets would mean realigning the conferences.

Post #5 » by **Goudelock** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:22 pm

jimmy keys wrote:Yes, easily. Great city, top 12 media market, growing population, gateway to Asia, great fans, great history, I could go on.

Take your pick between, OKC, Memphis, Milwaukee & New Orleans.

Three of those markets love and support their teams, and then New Orleans will probably pick up the support with Zion in town.

If any team should go to Seattle, it would either be the Clippers or Nets. But neither of those teams are moving anytime soon with a new stadium (and a recently built stadium).

Tor_Raps · Post #6 » by **Tor_Raps** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:23 pm

Or vancouver. Both deserve at least one team.
That's too big/rich of a market to be ignored.

birdlives_ma · Post #7 » by **birdlives_ma** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:25 pm

They’re definitely worthy, and anyone who’s familiar knows they got screwed out of the Sonics in the first place. But I don’t see a reason why any team would even think about moving. With all the revenue sharing, even a team with bad attendance is taking in cash right now. There’s no real incentive for any of them to go through the grueling, expensive process of putting a move together.

It’d more likely have to be through expansion, which would mean we’d have to add a team in the East too, and there’s not really any good candidates. Maybe San Diego, and slide Memphis or MN over to the East?

Edit: grammar (iPhones man....)

TheUroborosWorm · Post #8 » by **TheUroborosWorm** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:28 pm

2 new teams, Seattle and one of the trio Las Vegas/Vancouver/Mexico DF , move Minesotta and Memphis to the east coast and make 16/16 conferences so no team under 50% goes to the playoffs (or very rarely)

The Laker Kid · Post #9 » by **The Laker Kid** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:29 pm

Should've happened long time ago. Bill Gates should do it!

Shock Defeat · Post #10 » by **Shock Defeat** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:32 pm

Clay Bennett screwed everything by moving the team to OKC being shady and Stern allowed it to happen. In terms of losing millions in revenue as well as fans, that was a huge mistake by Stern.

HoopsterJones · Post #11 » by **HoopsterJones** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:33 pm

Add two new teams as an expansion.
Seattle and another city.

jimmy keys · Post #12 » by **jimmy keys** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:35 pm

PockyCandy wrote:
jimmy keys wrote:Yes, easily. Great city, top 12 media market, growing population, gateway to Asia, great fans, great history, I could go on.

Take your pick between, OKC, Memphis, Milwaukee & New Orleans.

Three of those markets love and support their teams, and then New Orleans will probably pick up the support with Zion in town.

If any team should go to Seattle, it would either be the Clippers or Nets. But neither of those teams are moving anytime soon with a new stadium (and a recently built stadium).

I'll remove Milwaukee since they built a new stadium recently. Also OKC has never been bad, so obviously that makes fan support higher, but what do they add the league's bottom line? If anything they should also have more teams in southern California and the New York area.

Post #13 » by **The Rebel** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:35 pm

Do they have a new arena? Unless they get a new arena I do not see the NBA giving them a team again.

SK21209 · Post #14 » by **SK21209** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:38 pm

I think we all agree that Seattle is a fun city for an NBA team but its a little weird to lament the fact that Seattle lost the Sonics to OKC and then suggest another "small" market lose their team to Seattle.

DingleJerry · Post #15 » by **DingleJerry** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:38 pm

Milwaukee shouldn't be included in this, they just built a new stadium and are selling out almost every game. Yea, if Giannis leaves it all comes crumbling down, but they just build a brand new stadium.

One I haven't seen mentioned yet is MN. Old stadium and the team has just been bad for so long. They're already in the WC too. Basically, they're in the same spot Milwaukee was about 6 years ago before Giannis and when the stadium situation was in flux.

IMO though. No city should lose their team. Adding two more should be the next step with how financially strong the league is and how much talent there is now, just need to spread the talent out. Add Seattle and Vegas, move MN to the East.

slicedbread2 · Post #16 » by **slicedbread2** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:42 pm

Not happening anytime soon.

Any league loves pitting cities as leverage to force other teams that currently have them to bend back over barrel and crank out the money for taxpayer funded stadiums. That's why the NFL never brought an expansion team to LA knowing that the threat of relocation would usually get those cities to crack until recently. Not to mention the debacle of the Sonics relocation and the trial associated with it is something the NBA would not want to go through.

In retrospect, Stern admitted that he made a mistake pulling out of the Vancouver market along with letting Seattle leave as they clearly screwed up there. Those are the two cities that should get an expansion team, but we'll see.

And1+2 · Post #17 » by **And1+2** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:45 pm

Mexico City would be my next market, if I was Long John Silver.

JShuttlesworth · Post #18 » by **JShuttlesworth** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:46 pm

I would be in favour of this.

I'm very much pro bringing teams back to Seattle and Vancouver (cue Vancouver "Vancouver had their chance" haters).

ConSarnit · Post #19 » by **ConSarnit** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:47 pm

I wonder if they’re saving expansion for a rainy day. Right now things are going pretty well financially for the league (the China incident excepted). You have to figure if they opened up expansion and said “you want in, it costs $2 billion” they could add 2 teams (Seattle and Vegas) and each owner could pocket around $130 mil.

In my mind this would be the easiest way to move to a 72-74 game schedule as you could sell the owners on lost revenue being made up by expansion fees, thus getting 2 birds stoned at once.

ATRAIN53 · Post #20 » by **ATRAIN53** » Mon Feb 17, 2020 7:56 pm

Should have never moved it out of there to begin with.

They should let Ballmer move the Clippers there.
Sacremento, Memphis, Atlana, Minnesota - any of those bottom feeder in attendance franchises should be allowed to relocate there.

and when they do move a team back there - it has to be the Sonics agian.