Technically, Seattle has not had an NBA team since 2008.
Culturally, the Seattle SuperSonics never really left.
You still see the green and gold around town. You still hear people talk about Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp as if the 1990s were about three weeks ago. And mention the way the team left to somebody who lived through it and you may discover very quickly that 18 years has not erased much.
That is what makes Seattle’s current NBA expansion story unusual.
If the league awards Seattle a franchise, it would technically be an expansion team. Emotionally, it would be a homecoming.
The Sonics entered the NBA in 1967 and became Seattle’s first major modern professional sports franchise.
It did not take them long to matter.
The 1977-78 team reached the NBA Finals before losing to the Washington Bullets. Seattle returned the following season and finished the job, beating Washington to win the 1979 NBA championship.
That championship remains one of the foundational moments in Seattle sports history.
Then came different eras and different stars.
Lenny Wilkens is inseparable from the early history of the franchise, first as a player and later as the coach of the championship team. Jack Sikma became one of the defining players of that championship era.
The 1990s brought another generation.
Gary Payton and Shawn Kemp gave Seattle one of the most entertaining teams in basketball. Payton became one of the greatest defensive guards in NBA history. Kemp played above the rim with the sort of force that made highlight reels feel inadequate.
Under George Karl, the Sonics became a perennial Western Conference contender.
The 1995-96 team won 64 games and reached the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls. Seattle lost the series in six games, but that team remains deeply embedded in the city’s sports memory.
Later came Ray Allen and Rashard Lewis, who helped lead Seattle to the 2005 Western Conference semifinals.
And then, in one of basketball history’s strangest footnotes, came Kevin Durant.
Seattle selected Durant with the second pick in the 2007 NBA Draft. He won Rookie of the Year as a SuperSonic.
Then the franchise moved.
Durant became an NBA superstar, MVP and champion, but his first NBA uniform said Seattle across the front.
He remains a bridge between the Sonics that were and the NBA Seattle hopes to see again.
The relocation could have severed that history completely. It did not.
Under the settlement between Seattle and the ownership group that moved the franchise to Oklahoma City, the relocated club could not use the SuperSonics name. The arrangement also created a path for a future Seattle NBA franchise to reconnect with the Sonics identity and history.
That is more important than it might initially sound.
Sports franchises are businesses, but teams become something else after enough years. They become part of families. Parents take children to games. Players become markers of different stages of people’s lives. Championships become shared civic memories.
Seattle did not lose that when the Sonics left.
It lost the team playing the games.
Now the NBA is formally exploring expansion into Seattle.
There is still no guarantee, and there is no official return date. But if the league eventually says yes, I suspect one of the most powerful moments will be remarkably simple.
Somebody will put a basketball jersey on a stage.
It will be green and gold.
And after all these years, it will say SuperSonics again.