Rapper and founder of the BIG3 basketball league Ice Cube was asked about the three cities that need NBA teams. Cube kept it real with his responses, naming three cities that used to have NBA teams until their franchises relocated to new cities: Seattle, Kansas City, and Buffalo.
“Stop playing. You stole a team from Seattle, put the damn team back. Seattle needs a team. Took a team from Kansas City, put the team back. Kansas City needs a team. You also took a team from Buffalo, put that sh*t back. Buffalo needs a team. Stop playin’.”
The Seattle SuperSonics have been defunct since 2008 when the team was moved to Oklahoma City and rebranded as the Thunder. While the Thunder have had a lot of success with MVP-caliber players such as Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, James Harden, and now Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, many are still angry about them having the team in OKC instead of Seattle.
Kansas City had their NBA franchise from 1972 to 1985, but they were relocated to Sacramento and they’ve been playing in the NBA as the Sacramento Kings ever since. Unfortunately, championship glory has eluded the franchise in Sacramento, with the franchise owning the longest postseason drought in NBA history with 16 years.
Buffalo hasn’t had an NBA team since the Buffalo Braves from 1970 to 1978. Franchise owner John Y. Brown Jr. swapped the team with then-Boston Celtics owner Irv Levin, who then moved the team to San Diego, where it was renamed the San Diego Clippers. The franchise was moved to Los Angeles by now-disgraced owner Donald Sterling in 1984. The team wasn’t successful in Buffalo and hasn’t been successful in Los Angeles either, still awaiting their first NBA Finals appearance, let alone a title.
One Of These Cities Will Likely Get An NBA Team Again
The NBA hasn’t officially announced they’re moving to look at a league expansion, but it’s been widely assumed for years that the NBA will start the process after their new media rights deal is finalized and announced to the public. There are already leading candidates for a new NBA franchise, with three cities being named by Adam Silver as potential destinations for an expansion.
“There’s been some discussion about going back to Seattle, potentially Las Vegas, no doubt, is very interested in a team. Mexico City one day. But there are lots of other U.S. cities and Canadian cities, frankly, that have reached out to us to tell us they’d be interested.”
Given the heavy interest, an expansion is inevitable. The multicultural NBA would love to add a team in Mexico and claim two non-US teams, but the momentum behind teams coming to Las Vegas and Seattle seems profound.
NBA legends like LeBron James and Shaquille O’Neal have repeatedly spoken about possibly owning an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas, while Kevin Durant has spoken about wanting a team in Seattle, the city where he was drafted in 2007.
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