The NBA is back in Seattle. But where are the SuperSonics?

The National Basketball Association is back in Seattle – for one night only. The third Annual Rain City Showcase is at Climate Pledge Arena Friday at 7:30 p.m.

The “home” team for the third straight year is the Los Angeles Clippers, owned by former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

The Portland Trail Blazers, owned by the estate of Microsoft Co-Founder Paul Allen and operated by his sister Jody, are the away team.

It’s technically a home game for the Clippers, but most people in attendance will be wearing Seattle SuperSonics gear.

The SuperSonics were moved to Oklahoma City 16 years ago, but the pain of losing a sports team still exists for many Seattleites.

Kenji Onozawa has been operating an account on X (formerly Twitter) called @SeattleSonics for all 16 of those years. Onozawa told KUOW that while his family relocated to Japan a few years ago, a SuperSonics return might mean his return as well.

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“It seriously got me considering, how do we relocate? What do we need to make that happen? I'm talking like these are years of my life. This has been 15, 16 years of me just tweeting about this team, and being a fan, even longer than that,” Onozawa said.

There are indications that the SuperSonics might be back sooner rather than later.

The NBA finalized an 11-year, $76 billion dollar media rights deal this summer, and NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has repeatedly said that expansion is the next big step after the deal.

KOMO-TV Reporter Chris Daniels told KUOW that we could hear about the NBA’s return to Washington by the end of this year, or the middle of next year.

But, there is a team in the NBA that is currently up for sale, and that may complicate the process.

“The [Boston] Celtics could be the most expensive NBA franchise ever in terms of a purchase, and they're currently up for sale,” Daniels said. “That is one of those variables that is potentially holding up expansion right now, to get a valuation on that franchise and what it is worth. That may actually set the price for any sort of expansion team.”

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Daniels said the NBA may be waiting to set a price for expansion until after the Celtics sell, because it risks losing billions of dollars if it undervalues an expansion fee.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at the league’s yearly Board of Governors meeting in September that expansion was “not a topic of conversation,” but that the league plans to discuss that topic sometime this season.

The current NBA season runs until June 2025, so news may not be immediate, but the NBA is closer than it's ever been to a potential return to Seattle.

Chris Daniels, who’s been covering the SuperSonics’ move since before the team actually left, and he told KUOW that he is excited to finally tell people when the team comes back.

“For the people that ask me about it in all walks of life — and it's not just sports fans — I just want to finish the story for them. And it sounds like we are closer to writing that final chapter than we were five years ago,” Daniels said.

Listen to Seattle Now's full segment about if — and when — the Supersonics could make a return to Seattle.