For years, Seattle basketball fans have been asked to wait.
Wait for the arena situation to improve. Wait for the NBA’s media agreements. Wait for expansion. Wait for the league to decide whether Seattle would finally get another chance after losing the SuperSonics in 2008.
The conversation is changing.
BlackSun Private Equity, Native World Sports and a group of strategic investors and regional partners announced August 12 that they had formed an ownership group seeking an NBA expansion franchise in Seattle. In the group’s announcement, it said it had submitted a formal proposal to return the SuperSonics to Washington through the NBA’s expansion process.
That does not mean Seattle has its Sonics back. Not remotely. The NBA still controls the expansion process, has not awarded Seattle a franchise and did not independently confirm the BlackSun proposal in subsequent reporting.
But this announcement matters for a different reason: Seattle increasingly looks less like a city hoping the NBA chooses it and more like a market where prospective owners are beginning to compete for the opportunity.
That is a much healthier place for Seattle to be.
Who is behind the new Seattle SuperSonics bid?
The publicly announced group is led by BlackSun Private Equity in partnership with Native World Sports and other investors and regional partners.
BlackSun founder, chairman and CEO Atonn F. Muhammad described the goal as larger than simply acquiring an NBA franchise.
“Our ambition isn’t simply to bring a team back,” Muhammad said in the group’s announcement. “It’s to build a championship organization worthy of this city.”
One of the most unusual elements of the proposal is its planned involvement with Tribal Nations. The group says it wants Tribal partners involved as economic participants and decision-makers rather than merely attaching Native imagery or ceremonial involvement to the franchise.
The group is also developing a broader sports and entertainment district that it says could be anchored by a new arena, although a site has not been finalized and any development would face the normal layers of review, financing, consultation and approval.
That’s an important point. An ambitious proposal is not the same thing as an approved arena, and an ownership bid is certainly not the same thing as an NBA franchise.
Seattle fans have lived through enough arena renderings and ownership scenarios to understand that distinction better than almost anybody.
Is BlackSun competing with another Seattle NBA ownership group?
Potentially, yes.
The Seattle expansion landscape already includes the group associated with Kraken chair Samantha Holloway and One Roof Sports & Entertainment, which controls the Kraken and has increased its ownership interest in Climate Pledge Arena.
And there may be others.
Commissioner Adam Silver said in July that people should not interpret the lack of publicly identified bidders as a lack of Seattle interest. In other words, the ownership competition may be considerably larger than what fans can currently see.
That makes the BlackSun announcement especially interesting.
Until recently, one of the differences between Seattle and Las Vegas appeared to be the number of visible ownership groups. Las Vegas had attracted several extremely well-financed potential bidders while Seattle’s ownership picture looked considerably quieter.
Now we know at least one more group is prepared to publicly put its name into the Seattle conversation.
Why does another ownership group matter for Seattle?
Because NBA expansion is going to be extraordinarily expensive.
The league’s Board of Governors voted in March to continue exploring expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas. Sports Business Journal has reported that potential expansion bids could land in the $7 billion to $10 billion range.
Those numbers fundamentally change the kind of ownership group Seattle needs.
This isn’t simply about finding somebody wealthy who loves basketball. A successful group needs enormous capital, credibility with the NBA’s existing governors, a workable arena strategy and the organizational capacity to build an NBA franchise essentially from scratch.
Competition between credible Seattle groups could strengthen the city’s position.
It also gives the NBA options.
For Sonics fans, that may be one of the most encouraging developments yet.
What about Climate Pledge Arena?
This may become one of the most fascinating questions surrounding the competing visions.
Climate Pledge Arena already exists. It hosts the NHL’s Kraken and WNBA’s Storm and was reconstructed with the possibility of major professional basketball in mind.
The Holloway/One Roof path therefore has an obvious arena component.
BlackSun’s announcement presents a different concept: a larger sports and entertainment district potentially anchored by a new arena and developed with significant Tribal Nation participation.
Whether the NBA ultimately sees that as an advantage, complication or simply one option among several remains to be seen.
But it introduces something Seattle hasn’t had much of during its long pursuit of the NBA: competing visions for what the next SuperSonics era could actually look like.
Are the Seattle SuperSonics officially coming back?
No.
That’s the answer fans need to keep in mind whenever another exciting expansion headline appears.
The NBA has moved further into exploring expansion, and Seattle is clearly one of the league’s principal markets under consideration. But the league has not awarded Seattle a franchise.
There is plenty to be excited about without turning possibility into certainty.
Seattle is finally getting to the interesting part
I have watched the Sonics-return discussion hang over Seattle for years, and much of that time has involved circumstances that fans couldn’t control.
This feels different.
We are beginning to talk about actual prospective ownership groups, multibillion-dollar bids, arena strategies and what a new Seattle NBA franchise might look like organizationally.
Those are not nostalgic questions.
They’re franchise-building questions.
And there is another reason I think the BlackSun development deserves attention: Seattle shouldn’t simply want an NBA team at any cost. If the Sonics return, this city should care deeply about who owns them, how they’re operated, how fans are treated and whether the organization understands what the Sonics mean to this region.
Seattle already knows what losing an NBA franchise feels like.
The next ownership group, whoever it ultimately is, should understand that history from day one.
BlackSun is now asking to be considered as one of those potential stewards.
Whether it ultimately wins that opportunity is impossible to know today.
But another serious group stepping forward is good news for Seattle basketball because the question is slowly changing from “Does anyone want to bring the Sonics back?” to a considerably more interesting one:
Who should get to do it?