Seattle wants an NBA team, but will the league play ball?
SEATTLE — Washington Gov. Jay Inslee presided over a meeting of Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers captains at midcourt before tipoff Monday evening as Lenny Wilkens, the coach of Seattle's lone NBA championship team in 1979, found his courtside seat. On the outer edge of the temporary court inside this city's two-year-old Climate Pledge Arena roamed Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton and Detlef Schrempf, headliners of the SuperSonics' 1996 run to the NBA Finals.
Macklemore, the rapper who grew up in Seattle, entered by the Payton-and-Kemp combination and grabbed a microphone. His volume raising, he called the night a reminder that Seattle, which lost the SuperSonics to relocation to Oklahoma City in 2008, deserved another NBA team. The declaration earned cheers, but he turned out to be the opening act.
Steve Ballmer, the Clippers owner once famous for his rabid speeches in front of software developers, took the microphone next. Within 90 seconds, he was rocking back and forth while bellowing, a sold-out crowd rising from their seats.
"If this is a basketball city, damn it, let's hear it!" Ballmer said.
In a sport in which preseason basketball games can play out like lifeless affairs, less enjoyed than endured, Monday night here felt different, a big-tent revival stopping for the evening to welcome a city full of fervent basketball believers. Seattle has long been a basketball city, but for the first time in four years, since the last exhibition between NBA teams was played here, and only the second time since the Sonics'
