The NBA has deep roots in the Pacific Northwest. The Portland Trail Blazers won their first, and to date, only title in 1977. The Seattle Supersonics followed suit in 1979. Before the Sonics’ relocation to Oklahoma City in 2008, the two teams shared a long-standing I-5 rivalry. If the NBA gets its way, there’s a decent chance the only teams playing on the I-5 corridor will be doing so in California.
NBA Commissioner Adam Silver took to the podium on Tuesday night to give an update following the summer meeting of the NBA board of governors. He provided updates on the record-setting sales of the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers, as well as other topics. There wasn’t any reason for Northwest basketball fans to expect a declaration of war against them, but that’s essentially what Silver did.
In addition to the Lakers and Celtics, the Portland Trail Blazers are currently on the market. And the remarks Silver offered on the sales process for Portland’s team were not exactly reassuring.
“It’s the league’s preference that that team remain in Portland,” Silver said. “We’ve had great success in Portland over the years. … I know there are groups that are actively engaged with the estate and have demonstrated interest in that team.”
That seems reassuring on its face, until you remember what David Stern, Silver’s predecessor, said about the Sonics in Seattle in 2007: “Seattle’s not going anywhere.”
Stern was far less wishy washy than Silver on the state of a Northwest team on the selling block, reaffirming his commitment to keeping the team in Seattle.
Less than a year later, it was packed up and moved to Oklahoma.
Silver followed up the first blow, suggesting that there could even be a question of the team leaving Portland, with a devastating haymaker. There wasn’t any question of the team leaving before. There is now.
“The City of Portland likely needs a new arena,” he said.
That the NBA, and potentially a new ownership group, would use the Moda Center as a hostage in negotiations with Portland has been blindingly obvious since a planned upgrade to the arena was halted shortly after the sales process was announced.
However, the idea of the Moda Center, a 30-year-old building, needing to be rebuilt entirely, came out of left field.
And to make things scarier, it comes directly out of the playbook the league used to yank the Sonics out of Seattle.
The then Key Arena had been extensively remodeled in 1995, just 12 years before the Sonics went up for sale. Following the sale, the NBA and the new ownership group immediately began a drumbeat that the building was subpar and needed to be torn down. The City of Seattle, having funded a major remodel just over a decade before, refused to pay. The NBA then moved the team.
It took the City of Portland and the Trail Blazers the better part of a decade to negotiate even the remodeling plan that was moving forward just a few months ago. Getting Providence Park significantly remodeled was like pulling teeth. A new stadium for Major League Baseball? A pipe dream for the better part of 30 years.
Any new arena would almost by necessity involve the demolition of the Veterans Memorial Coliseum next door. That prospect has ground to a halt more stadiums than I care to count.
The NBA knows this. Potential ownership groups know this. And now Adam Silver is publicly menacing the city.
“Nice team you have there, would be a shame if something happened to it.”
After threatening Portland, Silver wasn’t done beating up on Northwest basketball fans.
Ever since the NBA left Seattle, fans have held out hope the league would return. Key Arena eventually underwent a remodel, being gutted from the ground up to become a new multi-purpose arena and concert venue, where the NHL’s Seattle Kraken currently play to sellout crowds.
For years, the NBA has moved the goalposts on when Seattle could get a team.
First, the city needed a new arena.
Then the status of the other teams needed to be settled.
Then, the player-owner labor issues needed to be resolved.
Then, a new media rights deal for the league needed to be signed.
Every box has been checked.
Yet, listening to Silver on Tuesday night, one would think he had never even considered the prospect of expansion before.
“A lot of analysis still needs to be done, and nothing’s been predetermined one way or another, and without any specific timeline,” Silver said to open his press conference. “We’re going to be as thorough as possible and look at all the potential issues.”
Later, he followed that with an even bigger word salad: “I wish, standing here as the commissioner, I had lots of teams to dispense to many different markets who are interested in NBA basketball. I just think that we also have this greater obligation to expand, if we do so, in a very deliberate fashion and in a way that makes sense holistically for the league. So, that’s really the best I can do.”
The goalposts have moved once again. Now it’s even worse. Instead of “expansion will happen after thing x happens,” the league has shifted to needing more “analysis” before even considering expansion. Take all that together, and it doesn’t sound like NBA basketball will be back in Seattle anytime soon, if ever.
However, Blazer fans should take note that he was sure to mention many cities would love to have an NBA team. Seattle fans got the same refrain in 2007-08, with Stern regularly reminding them that if Seattle didn’t “want” the team, another city would gladly take it.
Surely the NBA wouldn’t run the same playbook in the Northwest less than 20 years after using it the first time?
Surely what happened to Seattle couldn’t possibly happen here.
History is full of people, countries, and civilizations that have believed that something that happened somewhere else couldn’t possibly happen to them.
Until it did.
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