What's up, South End?
This week, we're talking sports, and we have news that feels big. I don't want to get your hopes up, but in all honesty — I've already got my hopes up!
In a unanimous vote earlier this week, The NBA Board of Governors gave NBA Commissioner Adam Silver the green light to have formal talks with potential ownership groups to purchase expansion teams in Seattle and Las Vegas.
That means we could have the Sonics back as early as the 2028–2029 season. Boom!
This is big news for millennial Seattleites like myself. I remember having the Sonics. I remember going to games. I grew up with the Sonics engrained in our culture. Shawn Kemp had kids who lived in the Central District. Gary Payton's son played football for the CD Panthers and has Seattle tattoos that are visible while he dons his current Golden State Warriors jersey.
Both of these legends have been around the city since their playing days, as well as guys like Slick Watts, who left a legacy in our city that extended well past his years as a Sonic.
Now, we're closer than ever to finally getting our team back. And it comes at an interesting time for Seattle sports fans: The Seahawks are fresh off a Super Bowl win and in the midst of an ownership change; the Mariners are finally good; the Sounders and the Storm are solid organizations; and the relatively new hockey team, the Kraken, have already made the playoffs.
The Sonics are potentially walking into a city full of sports teams that will have an expectation of instant success.
To break all of this down, I reached out to an expert.
Jerry Brewer is currently a senior columnist for The Athletic, president of the Seattle Association of Black Journalists, and a former Seattle Times columnist. I spoke with Jerry about where we are in the process of getting the Sonics back, who might purchase the team, and what having the NBA back in Seattle means for the community.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
MD: I know your stint at The Seattle Times overlapped with the Sonics. Do you have a personal connection to the team?
JB: I do have a personal connection to the Sonics. I don't wear a lot of athletic apparel that has team logos on it, but I've got Sonics T-shirts, hats, and a Sonics hoodie. So if you just see me dressed casually and I'm wearing a team something, it's either the Chicago Cubs, which was my first love in sports when I was a kid, or the Sonics.
But I was only here for [their] last two years, and it wasn't like the team was trying to win. It was like a holding pattern. It almost felt like a living wake for the franchise. I think people knew where it was headed after Howard Schultz sold the team to Oklahoma City businessmen, and everybody was coming back, all the legends, and they were just sharing all the history with me.
MD: Can you catch us up on exactly where we are with the Sonics potentially coming back? And, do you have any ideas on who may be interested in owning the team?
JB: On Wednesday, the NBA Board of Governors met, and they gave the league permission to start negotiating exclusively with bidders who want expansion franchises in Seattle and Las Vegas. It is expected that there will be multiple bidders for each city.
Seattle's a little more buttoned up, because the owners of the Kraken, the group that also is the lead investor in Climate Pledge Arena, they've wanted an NBA team from the get-go, from the minute that they helped to have Climate Pledge Arena built. They wanted to get the hockey franchise, because they felt like they could access that first, but they wanted to also get an NBA franchise, and so they're already moving the chess pieces so they can have the greatest potential bid.
MD: When Climate Pledge opened, I took a tour, and I remember seeing that they had built a locker room for the Sonics. So, no surprise they're in the early running. But as you may guess, the streets are floating Jeff Bezos' name around — any truth to that?
JB: It's still too early to say, but I haven't heard that. I don't know Jeff Bezos' passion for doing business in Seattle anymore. Like, he lives in South Florida. He's got business interests everywhere. Obviously, he owns The Washington Post, but the space contract and making sure he protects the Amazon money seem like his main priorities. I think if Bezos were to get into pro sports, the NFL would make a lot more sense than the NBA right now.
MD: Growing up, the Sonics were an important part of my childhood. I still remember Ray Allen's battles with a young Kobe Bryant. You recently wrote about how your kids view sports differently than you did, and I have a similar experience with my nephews being more likely to criticize athletes than admire them. In my day, we had a community around the team. Do you think the next generation will love the team like my generation did?
JB: It's a concern. It's absolutely a concern. Because you're right, like, it's this sort of transactional state that we put sports in. They make so much money, and we have to spend so much money on them. You can't even turn on the TV and watch the games — you have to have so many streaming services, it makes it less intimate.
When you talk about community, you're talking about sports franchises being a civic asset. And in theory, you can reach out and touch them. Like, you can go to their basketball camps, and you get their autographs in practice, and all of these kinds of things. In theory, you can see them at a restaurant or grocery store. That's what that's all about.
The cool thing is that it's going to be a continuation of the Sonics, but they're also going to be a new franchise. So they're going to have to do a lot more community activations than what you would see if they had been around this entire time. So in this rebirth, the kids will get to see the team go from the ground up.
The Judkins light rail station is slated to open this weekend. In preparation, major transit redevelopment has been underway.
Contributor Connor Nash reports the updates include a bus lane added to the northbound lane of Rainier Avenue South, traffic signals put up at South Grand and South College Streets, and pedestrian crossings painted across the on/off ramps for I-90.
Speaking of the new light rail station, contributor Jas Keimig reports Sound Transit chose Seattle-raised Barbara Earl Thomas and New York-based artist Hank Willis Thomas (no relation) to install artworks inside and outside the new Judkins Park Station.
Last weekend, President Trump announced he would deploy ICE to airports to assist with extremely long lines at security checkpoints.
This was in response to a partial government shutdown that paused the pay of TSA staff and led to airports across the country being understaffed.
Seattle Port Commissioner Toshiko Hasegawa penned an op-ed to update Seattleites on the status of our airport and let local travelers know what to expect in the near future.
As of now, the partial shutdown is still in place. If you need info on whether ICE will be at Sea-Tac, read Hasegawa's article.
This is an abbreviated version of The Roundup newsletter. To get the entire newsletter, including a weekly list of events to check out and my shout-out to South End Gems, subscribe here. See you next week!
Mike Davis is the newsletter editor and Voices editor at the South Seattle Emerald. Born and raised in Seattle's South End, Mike is a longtime journalist who's covered everything from arts and culture to sports to politics.
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