Tagged: Sonics

It appears there will be no professional basketball in Seattle this year.  

The NBA’s relocation committee has favored keeping the Kings franchise in Sacramento, turning down a bid to revive the Sonics. 

The unanimous vote leaves a number of questions about what happens next for investor Chris Hansen and his attempts to bring the Sonics back to Seattle.

Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson has announced a new investor to help fill the role vacated by billionaire Ron Burkle in the city's bid to keep the Kings from moving to Seattle.

Johnson said at his weekly news conference Tuesday that Sacramento developer Mark Friedman has joined the group. The announcement comes a day after Burkle backed out because of a conflict of interest stemming from his ownership stake in Relativity Sports, which manages some NBA players' careers.

As the NBA weighs whether to allow the Kings basketball team to move to Seattle from Sacramento, the league has to consider the possibility of an antitrust lawsuit.

Why should the Sacramento Kings be worth more than $500 million when they’re nowhere near the top of the league? Sports economist Roger Noll of Stanford University says it’s simple: a scarce supply of teams. That's by design, he says, because NBA owners want to keep their franchises valuable. And that exposes the league to a possible lawsuit. 

Seattle-area politicians will make their case to NBA leaders this week that the league should allow the Sacramento Kings to be transferred here.

The NBA will have to decide between rival offers from Seattle and Sacramento. At this Wednesday’s NBA meeting in New York, Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and King County Executive Dow Constantine will explain how the city and county have committed to supporting the team’s transfer and building a new arena.

Constantine says he understands why Sacramento is trying so hard to keep the team, but that Seattle has more to offer.

Longshoremen in Seattle plan to appeal a recent judge’s ruling that threw out their challenge to a new Sonics basketball arena.

The longshoremen’s union argued that the city of Seattle, King County and investor Chris Hansen violated state environmental laws when they signed an agreement for the arena. They said that memorandum of understanding focuses too much on the site Hansen prefers – in Seattle’s SoDo neighborhood. And that’s before an environmental review is finished.

A King County judge has thrown out a lawsuit aimed at blocking a deal to build a new basketball arena in Seattle. That removes one obstacle to bringing back the Sonics NBA team.

Rumors that an NBA team may soon return to Seattle are good news for an Olympia company that prints T-Shirts.

Media Fly Creative has printed about 1,500 Sonics T-shirts saying "We're Back!"