Expansion talks have obviously heated up in the last year or two and Seattle often gets brought up along with Las Vegas, although shouldn’t Seattle be by far the clear favorite for the first team with all of the other cities competing for the second spot?
Seattle is the largest market without a current NBA team and is 13th media market in the US. They had the SuperSonics before OKC essentially stole the team from Seattle and left the history for Seattle to reclaim once they got another team back. Speaking of NBA team, they had one for over 40 years and was only moved after a new owner bought the team and wanted to bring it back to his home market. There is plenty of funding for the ownership as shown with others buying teams to try to move them to Seattle (Kings) although the NBA shutting it down. They also have a brand new NBA ready arena that is ready to host the team that was created for Seattle’s NHL team and even left room to create NBA locker rooms. There is certainly no lack of money or interest in ownership groups based in Seattle that would be interested in purchasing a team. They still even host preseason games in Seattle because they know it’s a massive basketball market that lusts for their team back.
Considering all of this, isn’t it pretty clear that Seattle is by far the best city to expand to for expansion to go with places like Las Vegas and others competing for the second team instead?
Grizzlies and Pelicans to the east imo.
If the NBA is smart, it’ll be the wolves. It’ll reduce travel miles for both the wolves and every other western conference team.
Minneapolis is West of the Mississippi, Memphis and New Orleans are both East, so that’s my prediction.
Minneapolis is both east and west (as well as north and south) of the mississippi. It literally goes through the city. This argument makes no sense tbh.
Downtown and the stadium is west of the Mississippi it is not possible to be north or south of the Mississippi unless you are at its origin or mouth. (New Orleans is “north” but that is the east bank of the Mississippi
Downtown and the stadium are less than a mile from the river. I don’t think the NBA is going to take that into account, when the alternative saves travel miles (and thus money) for all teams.