Were We Close To NBA Basketball Returning To Seattle?

(NBC Sports ) – The NBA won’t expand anytime soon, but there’s still demand to get a team in Seattle and any number of cities. That means the quickest path could be a current franchise moving.

It won’t be the Bucks, who are playing in a new arena in Milwaukee this season.

But it could have been.

Bucks owner Marc Lasry, via Jeff Zillgitt of USA Today:

“We were going to do everything we could to stay in Milwaukee,” Lasry said. “That was ultimately something that was outside our control in that the NBA wanted a new arena, and if we couldn’t get one, they would have forced us to move.”

“For me, I never wanted to be anywhere else, and the simple reason is I like going to games there. We were going to do everything we could to stay in Milwaukee.”

If Lasry and co-owner Wes Edens would have done “everything we could to stay in Milwaukee,” Wisconsin governments did a terrible job negotiating the arena deal. Taxpayers are spending $457 million (more, if you count the absurd naming-rights situation) on the arena. Why pay so much for what will surely be a money-loser for the public? Maybe there’s an intangible value in keeping the Bucks in Milwaukee, but if Lasry and Edens were so determined to get the arena built, they could have contributed more than the $174 million they did.

Goddammit, we were so close! OK well maybe there’s no proof that if the Bucks had to move that they would have wound up in Seattle, but come on let me pretend for a second. We all know that when it comes to NBA teams and their arenas, things can get tricky. States don’t want to use public funds to pay for them, owners don’t want to shell out hundreds of millions of dollars of their own money to build them, and just like we saw in Seattle, Sacramento, and now Milwaukee, it can make things tense when it comes to relocation. That’s why it’s tough to believe these owners when they say they “really wanted to keep the team where it is”. Well look at the money difference that was shelled out here, I would say $457M vs $174M is a bit ridiculous. A quick Google search tells me this Mark Lasry is worth a cool $1.8B., something tells me he could have footed the bill.

But at the end of the day, the Bucks did get their new arena and are now at no risk of relocating. If you haven’t seen it, it’s pretty fucking cool

It’s hard enough to make MIL a destination for free agents, but you know what helps? Having an MVP candidate and a state of the art facility. For whatever reason that sort of stuff matters to good NBA players, and if you aren’t redoing your arena/practice facility to keep with the times, you’re in a bit of a pickle.

If we are to believe that the NBA would have forced them to relocate, where do you think the destination would have been? I feel like the fans and basketball world would demand Seattle, but part of me thinks they would have moved them to Vegas. It’s no secret the NBA is in love with the Sin City and it’s only a matter of time before we see a professional team there, I truly believe that. Can you imagine the riots we’ll get if a team does relocate and it’s NOT to Seattle? I need that chaos in my life, and I can’t imagine Adam Silver would be that cold blooded, but as we know money talks and there is big money in Vegas for the NBA. Just look at what’s going on with the Summer League now, that shit is selling out in mid July.

So it’s hard to know if the Bucks would have made the move to Seattle, and a quick look at some other old arenas might be a good place to start to see who might one day end up there. For example the Heat’s building opened up in 1999, but I couldn’t see that happening. Maybe the Wizards since their building opened up in 1997 or the Wolves with the Target Center that opened in 1990? If the Pelicans lose Anthony Davis, are they on the hot seat? Their arena is pretty old opening in 1999, and if he’s gone they may not be able to fill it.

Either way it’s this has to be brutal news for Sonics fans to hear, I just ask you don’t give up hope. We’ve made it this long holding onto this dream of basketball returning to Seattle, don’t stop now.