The NBA is returning to Seattle… for a pre-season game, sorry to get your hopes up there.
According to Ailene Voisin of the Sacramento Bee, the Kings and Warriors will have a pre-season game in Seattle in 2018:
“The Kings and Golden State Warriors have scheduled a preseason game next season in Seattle, according to multiple league sources.
The Oct. 6 meeting between Northern California teams will be the first NBA game in the Key Arena since the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City after the 2007-08 season and became the Thunder.”
It will be fascinating to see how Seattle fans handle this game, it could possibly be a sellout and will most definitely be televised nationally in some manner even though it is just a pre-season game. I am sure passionate Seattle basketball fans will come in droves with their Sonics paraphernalia and Kevin Durant jerseys (Durant was drafted by the Sonics and played his rookie season there before the team moved to Oklahoma City).
This is probably a case of the NBA testing the waters about a Seattle return and bringing a lot more attention and potential profit to a pre-season game by hosting it in Seattle by having probably the two franchises most related to the end of the Sonics franchise and their hopes of getting an NBA team again excluding the Thunder, which would have just been cruel.
Durant is now an NBA MVP, NBA champion and NBA Finals MVP and the Seattle community was robbed of seeing him flourish into the star he is and the Kings had long been the rumored franchise to re-locate to Seattle in recent years until they got a new arena.
The Sonics will be back in Seattle some day, it is anybody’s guess at this point as to when that day is though.
