Ballmer: NBA return to Seattle not likely within next year or two
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer said at a sports and technology conference this week that he doesn’t see the NBA returning to Seattle “within the next year or two years,” and that the city’s best chance of getting a new arena to house a professional sports franchise built might be to focus on pro hockey rather than seeking a replacement for the dearly departed Seattle SuperSonics.
From Geoff Baker of the Seattle Times:
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“It’s just not likely to happen,” Ballmer told those attending the [GeekWire Sports Tech Summit at Safeco Field]. “There has been no discussion about expansion since I have been involved with the league. So, I don’t think that will happen. The league has really moved to favor teams staying in their current markets. You’d have to find a team that’s at the end of their [arena] lease, where it looks hard to build an arena and where they’ve tried really hard to build an arena.
“And you’d have to show that an arena can get built in Seattle,” he added. “Because unlike most other cities that build an arena before they have a team, I don’t think an arena is going to get built here before a team comes here unless it gets done in the context of hockey.”
A Memorandum of Understanding between Hansen and the City of Seattle and King County provides up to $200 million in public bond funds for an arena, but only if he can land an NBA franchise. The MOU expires in November 2017, and NBA commissioner Adam Silver has said that it’s unlikely the NBA will expand within that timeframe.
Two months ago, the Seattle City Council voted 5-4 against giving up part of Occidental Avenue South to Hansen in order to make his arena plans “shovel ready” and potentially facilitate landing a team. Several council members expressed reservation about giving up the street when Hansen had no team for his project to proceed.
In recent years, two franchises fit the profile presented by Ballmer of a team at the end of its arena lease that was having difficulty generating the money and support to build a new one: the Sacramento Kings and Milwaukee Bucks. The latter franchise, which sold for a then-record $550 million in 2014, appeared to have hit a snag in negotiations with state, city and county legislators over public funding for a proposed $1 billion downtown development project that would include a $500 million gym. But after threats of relocation to Seattle or Las Vegas that led to public shaming of the Bucks’ brass by HBO political comedian John Oliver, the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly voted to approve $250 million in public funding for the building project, which seems like an awful lot for a barrel of beer, but is apparently how much it cost to keep the Bucks in Wisconsin.
Former Microsoft CEO Ballmer was famously part of an attempt to purchase the Kings, partnering with entrepreneur/hedge fund manager Chris Hansen in 2013 in an attempt to buy the Kings for $525 million (an offer later increased to $575 million and then to $625 million) in hopes of relocating them to Washington. That didn’t happen, as the NBA’s relocation committee recommended the team stay in Sacramento, the league’s Board of Governors voted to keep them there, and a local ownership group led by Vivek Ranadivé eventually purchased the team from the Maloofs for a then-league-record $534 million. Ballmer would later depart from Hansen’s hoped-for SoDo District arena project and smash the previous franchise sale record, paying a whopping $2 billion to buy the Clippers from disgraced former owner Donald Sterling.
That leaves Seattle’s hopes for an NBA return hinging on expansion. Without specifically referencing Seattle’s hope for a return to the NBA, Silver struck a similarly chilly note on the topic of expansion during a Tuesday press conference from the league’s Board of Governors meeting at Las Vegas Summer League.
“That’s not on our agenda right now from a league standpoint,” Silver said. “We’re happy with our 30 clubs. Maybe at some point down the road we’ll take a look at expansion. Over time, all organizations grow — at least, those that continue to thrive — so at some point, we’ll look at it. But right now, we’re just not in expansion mode.”
While Hansen’s group’s existing memorandum of understanding with the city and county specifically designates the money for an arena only in the event he can land an NBA franchise, the door does remain open to a private-funding kickstarted arena plan to house a new NHL team, a long-discussed possibility.
The NHL recently approved a plan to place a new expansion club in Las Vegas, bringing the league to 31 teams — 16 in the Eastern Conference, 15 in the West. Despite Seattle’s inability to submit a credible bid to the NHL before last July’s deadline and NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman’s recent insistence that “It’s not like we’re pining after Seattle,” that could put Seattle in position to find another entry point back into the professional sports landscape.
Whether or not a hockey-sparked arena deal comes to pass, Ballmer remains optimistic that Seattle will one day be able to boast an NBA team; he just doesn’t see it happening in the near future.
“Over time, will that happen? Yes, I somehow believe it’ll happen,” he said. “In my own case, I’m 60 years old, and I wasn’t prepared to wait five or 10 years, and the Clippers were an amazing opportunity for me.”
Chris and Ted Ackerley — the sons of the late Barry Ackerley, who owned the Sonics from 1983 through 2001 before selling them to a group led by Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO who five years later sold the team to the Clay Bennett-led group that would move the team to Oklahoma City and rebrand them as the Thunder — told Chris Daniels of KING 5 in a Friday email that they have interest in bringing basketball back to Seattle:
Seattle is a world class city with a rich basketball history and we believe it deserves an NBA team, alongside its other thriving professional sports franchises. Seattle is also our home, and we are committed to helping in any way we can to bring the NBA back to the city.
We have a long-term approach in all our civic, philanthropic, and business engagements. Securing a franchise is a complicated, long-term process. Along the way, it will require support and collaboration from the Seattle community and it won’t happen overnight. We will continue to do what we can to help achieve this goal and we look forward to the day when Seattle can celebrate the return of an important civic institution like the Seattle Supersonics.
Daniels terms it “unclear” how the Ackerleys would accomplish their goal, citing “multiple sources, in and out of City Hall, [who described] the Ackerleys’ interest as ‘very preliminary.'”
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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