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Seattle eyes new basketball plan — Sonics renewed?

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[5]By Oregon Small Business Association [6],

Could Seattle get another NBA team? That’s a definite maybe. Though the city has lacked a pro basketball team since the SuperSonics went to Oklahoma City in 2009, three recent developments indicate that the situation may change soon.

First of all, Paul Allen, owner of the Portland Trail Blazers, said publicly recently that he would like to bring the NBA back to Seattle. And now, developer Chris Hansen has purchased three acres near downtown Seattle for a whopping $21.6 million. Now Hansen is trying to get the city and county to go in with him on $700 million project that would build a stadium and attract the money-making power of the NBA to Washington state. Officials, however, aren’t biting. At least, they aren’t going to bite until Hansen has an NBA team signed up.

That little problem leads to the third factor: Sacramento is about to lose its basketball team. The Kings have a March 1 deadline for the city to provide a proposal to build them a new stadium there.

In short, the ingredients are here. Hansen and Allen want it to happen. And if the project goes through, basketball won’t be the only thing going on the proposed Seattle arena. The NHL also wants a piece of the arena, and has talked about creating a brand-new team or moving the Phoenix Coyotes to play in Seattle. The city already has pro baseball and soccer teams, the Mariners and the Sounders.

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