NBA returning to Seattle? You won’t like Commissioner Adam Silver’s answer

National Basketball Association (NBA) Commissioner Adam Silver called Seattle a “fantastic basketball market.” But does that mean an NBA team is headed to Seattle?

Nope.

At a Board of Governor’s press conference, Silver was asked about the timeline to bring an NBA team back to Seattle. But he couldn’t offer any new details, though did say he’s “tremendously empathetic” to Seattle fans.

“I wish I could be more conclusive today and say here it is, here’s the timeline,” Silver explained. “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.”

‘Potential for the NBA to return to Seattle’

Silver noted that some uncertainty over local media broadcast rights was not anticipated when discussing an expansion team in Seattle.

“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 think I’m not being more forthcoming publicly doesn’t mean we’re not studying it very intensively. 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.”

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