The NBA did not want to move another franchise away from its city.
Los Angeles Clippers owner Steve Ballmer was actually supposed to own another NBA team.
Ballmer appeared on “Podcast P with Paul George” and shared to one of his current team’s star players that he wanted to revive the Seattle Supersonics franchise, and was going to do so by purchasing the Sacramento Kings in 2013.
“There’s a guy from Seattle who lives in San Francisco but wants a team back in Seattle. So we talked to the guys who at the time owned the Kings, the Maloof brothers, into selling the team, and we’re going to move them to Seattle,” Ballmer said. “And they accept our bid.”
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The Supersonics left Seattle for Oklahoma City in 2008, changing its team name to the Thunder in the process.
Ballmer desired to move a team to Seattle because he was living in the state of Washington, and said his wife did not want to leave. But according to the former Microsoft CEO, the NBA did not want to move the Kings away from Sacramento.
“The Commissioner basically says, ‘Hey, you buy the team if you want to, but you keep it in Sacramento,” Ballmer said.
A year later, Ballmer explored purchasing a team again after retiring from Microsoft, but still desired to move a team to Seattle.
At this point, David Stern had already passed the mantle of NBA Commissioner over to Adam Silver, and Ballmer said that Silver told him that the league did not want to move teams away from their cities anymore specifically because of what happened with the Supersonics.
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Ballmer said eventually poked around at buying the Milwaukee Bucks, who at the time had just drafted Giannis Antetokounmpo, who unbeknownst to the world would turn into a two-time league MVP. But he said the Bucks owners were not interested in selling to Ballmer.
He got his break shortly after due to the infamous scandal involving former Clippers owner David Sterling.
Ballmer purchased the Clippers for $2 billion in May 2014, and was critiqued at the time because it was the most expensive sale of any professional sports franchise.
But sports team valuations have drastically increased in the last decade, with the Clippers now valued at $3.73 billion by Sportico.
The Kings were sold in 2013 to a group led by Vivek Ranadive for $534 million and are now valued at $2.32 billion.
Seattle has still not had an NBA team since the Supersonics left the city, but a looming NBA expansion in the next few years has Seattle as one of the top two target cities to receive a team.
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