Silver: Seattle on 'short list' of cities for 'inevitable' NBA expansion
Seattle could someday have an NBA team again.
In a Players' Tribune interview with Portland Trail Blazers shooting guard C.J. McCollum last week, commissioner Adam Silver said it's possible the league will bring a franchise back to the city, but he doesn't know when.
"I think it's just a question of when the right time is to seriously start thinking about expansion," said Silver.
"I don't want to put a precise timeline on it, but it's inevitable at some point that we’ll start looking at the growth of franchises. That's always been the case in this league, and Seattle will no doubt be on a short list of cities we'll look at," he added.
The Seattle SuperSonics entered the league in 1967-68 and captured an NBA championship in 1979. The club relocated to Oklahoma City in 2008 and became the Thunder.
Several Sonics greats have been strong proponents of the city regaining a team. Gary Payton said last year that Seattle "deserves" an NBA team and he'd be interested in becoming an owner, while Ray Allen echoed those sentiments in May.
"I still can't believe that there is no basketball in Seattle," he wrote in a post on Instagram. "This city is too great not to have a hoops squad. Come on everybody we need to rally and bring the NBA back to Seattle."