Portland Trail Blazers power forward Greg Brown III. (Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports)
With the Trail Blazers on the verge of being sold, NBA owners are reportedly against letting them move to Seattle preferring expansion for the city.
The NBA is heading for major change with the ownership of the Portland Trail Blazers up for grabs.
While the Blazers are likely to have new ownership new, the league is also reportedly considering expansion teams for Seattle and Las Vegas.
Of course, the idea of the Portand franchise being sold and then relocating to Seattle has been floated amidst all the change. However, John Canzano has now squashed that idea.
NBA owners reportedly favor expansion over moving Trail Blazers to Seattle
According to Conzano, NBA owners won’t let a relocation happen when expansion fees are on the table.
“A sitting team president of an NBA franchise told me it’s unlikely that the league’s owners would allow the Trail Blazers to relocate to Seattle after a potential sale. ‘That’s a no-go,’ he said. The prevailing sentiment is that Seattle and Las Vegas have already been unofficially earmarked for NBA expansion and the current owners would prefer to avoid cannibalizing what would be a windfall of $6 billion in combined expansion fees.”
Most NBA fans would love the idea of the Seattle Supersonics returning to the league, so it’ll be a bummer if expansion doesn’t come through. Still, it would be pretty jarring to see the Blazers become the Sonics. It’s better for both franchises to exist in the NBA.
A sale of the Blazers should happen sooner than later with Canzano naming Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison and MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, as potentially interested parties.
The expansion talk looks likely to come to fruition in the next couple of years. By 2024, the NBA’s western footprint could look quite different.