SEATTLE (AP) — An NBA preseason game might not seem like a landmark moment, even in a basketball-hungry city like Seattle, but Jamal Crawford thinks even exposure has value.
“It’s reigniting a whole new generation of kids who need to see this,” said Crawford, a Seattle native who has been a basketball ambassador for the city throughout a 20-year career in the game. NBA and now with a pro-am bringing in NBA players. each summer. “They need to be able to dream and know it’s real.”
The NBA is making its last brief return to Emerald City. The Los Angeles Clippers will face the Portland Trail Blazers there on Monday night, the first time two NBA teams have met in Seattle since 2018, when the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings played a preseason game. It was the last sporting event inside KeyArena before it was gutted and rebuilt into the shiny Climate Pledge Arena.
There was something of a warm-up on Friday when the Clippers took on Israeli team Maccabi Ra’anana in an exhibition, one where most of the Clippers’ big names – Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, John Wall and Reggie Jackson – n were not participating.
A sold-out crowd turned out for that Warriors-Kings game four years ago, the first in Seattle since the beloved SuperSonics left for Oklahoma City in 2008 after 41 years in the Pacific Northwest. Another big crowd is expected on Monday.
“The Sonics haven’t been a team since I’ve been in the NBA. So just going to play in Seattle is cool,” Blazers star Damian Lillard said. “We played in Vancouver a few years ago. I think two or three years ago we had a pre-season game at the (Memorial) Coliseum, so whenever we get to do something like that, I always appreciate it because I wondering what it was like when it was a real thing, when games were played in these different arenas, so I’m excited to play in Seattle.
One day, perhaps soon, Seattle is expected to reclaim its place as an NBA city.
“It’s always been a big city for me,” Clippers coach Tyronn Lue said Friday. “It’s a shame that they lost their team and the team went to OKC. This city definitely deserves a team.
Speculation is rife about when the NBA will choose to expand. Thanks to the resolution of its arena situation, Seattle appears to be at the forefront of those expansion talks, with Las Vegas likely close behind.
But NBA commissioner Adam Silver hasn’t committed to a possible expansion timeline, and it seems likely those talks won’t gain momentum until the league deals with the new collective bargaining agreement. and TV deals looming on the horizon.
Community involvement was never questioned. Seattle fans’ appetite hasn’t waned since the Sonics left and as the region has become a hotbed for NBA talent, whether it’s Crawford continuing to carry the city’s banner, Zach LaVine of Renton, Wash., to this year’s top pick, Paolo Banchero, another Seattle native.
As if reinforcements were needed, the summer provided a perfect example as fans camped overnight outside the Crawford summer league site for the chance to come in and watch LeBron James do his first basketball visit to the city in over a decade.
“Anyone who knows Seattle knows what a great basketball city we are,” Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said this summer when announcing the preseason game.
The idea of bringing the Blazers and Clippers together in Seattle was the result of brainstorming between Lue and Blazers coach Chauncey Billups. The two close friends wanted their teams to meet in the preseason and Lue noted that the owners of both teams are based in Seattle: Steve Ballmer of the Clippers and Jody Allen of the Blazers.
“I haven’t been back there since I played there in 2008, I think it was. So just to be able to go back and you know, Mr. Ballmer and kind of see his offices and how he lives, and (Chauncey) get a chance to see his landlord and then be with my best friend, I thought that would be a great middle ground,” Lue said.
