Silver recognized the city’s frustrations over not having more clarity and a timeline for when they could expand to Seattle.
SEATTLE — There were no new updates from the National Basketball Association’s (NBA) commissioner about potential expansion into Seattle Thursday, but the league’s top executive did acknowledge the city as a “fantastic basketball market.”
Adam Silver held a press conference following two days of the league’s Board of Governors meetings. He was asked by The Seattle Times’ Tim Booth about how Seattle fans should feel about the continued pushback on a timeline to add teams.
“I wish I could be more conclusive today and say here it is, here’s the timeline,” Silver said Thursday. “There are events that are clearly outside of my control, part of it as I said is trying to assess value in a way that is both fair even to a potential owner and fair to the existing owners in terms of what it means to add additional partners, different cities, divide up our current media pie.
“We also want to make sure we put teams in a position, particularly as we’re setting a price, to be in a position to be competitive, economically successful and just as importantly for the other teams, just as successful on the floor.”
Silver said the uncertainty around local media rights was an unanticipated issue with expansion talks. Many of the NBA’s teams have seen their local broadcast partners deal with bankruptcy or financial troubles in recent years, leading some to opt for free, over-the-air broadcasts. The Portland Trail Blazers left Bellevue-based ROOT Sports before the 2024-25 season in favor of this model. The National Hockey League’s Seattle Kraken did the same by leaving ROOT and partnering with KING 5 and KONG for its local broadcasts.
He went on to recognize the city’s frustrations over not having more clarity, and commended the city as a viable potential option for an NBA franchise.
“I would just say again to our many fans in Seattle, and I hear from them often and the legacy of the Sonics is still very strong and it’s a fantastic basketball market, is that we are very focused on it,” Silver said. “The fact that I’m not being more forthcoming publicly doesn’t mean we’re not studying it very intensely. We don’t take those fans for granted. We’re thankful that the interest has remained over all these years and I would just say the fact that we’re not ready to make any public announcements with a specific timeline doesn’t mean we don’t care a lot about those fans and we aren’t very focused on the potential for the NBA to return to Seattle.”
The league just agreed to a new set of national broadcast rights, but working out the issues with local media will be much more complicated, as every team and market is slightly different.
For now, the wait continues in Seattle’s quest to have an NBA franchise once again.
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