‘Fingers crossed.’ Lenny Wilkens, other Sonics legends ready for team’s return
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Ex-Sonics players reunited in Seattle to honor Lenny Wilkens and urge NBA action
- NBA may begin formal expansion talks in July, with Seattle a top candidate
- Revenue-sharing concerns among owners remain key roadblock to league expansion
They came back to honor Lenny Wilkens. And to let the NBA know.
We’ve waited long enough.
“First of all,” Nate McMillan said Saturday as he began speaking into bright sunshine at the unveiling of Wilkens’ statue outside Climate Pledge Arena, “I hope the NBA is watching.”
McMillan is known as “Mr. Sonic.” That’s for the 12 NBA seasons he played through 1998, all with Seattle. He joined Detlef Schrempf, Spencer Haywood, Jack Sikma, George Karl, Dale Ellis and other former Sonics honoring Wilkens at Seattle Center last weekend. McMillian called Wilkens the “Godfather of the Sonics.”
Wilkens’ bronze likeness, number 19 driving for the Sonics into the 1970s, stands in the west plaza of the arena along First Avenue North. The former player, player-coach, coach and executive led the Sonics to their only NBA championship in 1979.
Wilkens’ statue is outside the glittering arena opened for the NHL’s Kraken — and built to specifications for the NBA. That is, the return of the Sonics and the NBA to the city they got moved out of to Oklahoma City in 2008.
Schrempf, a former Sonics star, was there with McMillan, Wilkens and the others Saturday. They shared the same feeling: The Sonics need to be back. Yesterday.
“I feel like we’ve lost a generation, right?” Schrempf told The News Tribune last week on KJR-FM radio.
“I was at the NBA Finals in Indiana. The Pacers (who drafted Schrempf out Centralia High School and the University of Washington with the eighth pick of the 1985 draft) had me come out for a game.
“I remembered what it felt like, to have a city behind you and competing. And also, I remembered what it felt like to cheer for your home city, for your team. The team that you get behind.”
Schrempf, now 62, still lives in his home on Seattle’s east side.
Wilkens, now 87, still lives here, too. The second Black coach in NBA history, with the Sonics in 1969, retired in 2005 with more wins than any coach in NBA history (1,332). Through Seattle-area fundraising events, Lenny Wilkens Foundation has given more than $10 million to Seattle Children’s hospital’s Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic in the city’s Central District.
Wilkens is the only three-time Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee. He’s enshrined as a player, coach and as an assistant coach on the 1992 U.S. Olympic “Dream Team.”
He is with Schrempf and all other basketball royalty, plus fans in the Pacific Northwest. He is looking forward to the Sonics returning to Seattle.
“I think it would be incredible,” Wilkens told the TNT on KJR last week. “We have such a fan-support base here that there’s no question in my mind.
“It would be a Godsend.”
Adam Silver, NBA expansion process
Schrempf says he still watches the NBA. The three-time league All-Star believes its players remain the world’s best athletes, in the world’s best sport.
Yet he isn’t all that into the game that made him who he became.
“I’m not cheering for anybody. I don’t have a home team,” Schrempf said. “I’m not invested.”
He’s not alone in that sentiment — and in wanting commissioner Adam Silver to get on with the league’s expansion process already.
Multiple times in the last two years Silver has mentioned Seattle is a favorite to regain the Sonics and the NBA. Eventually.
“I told Adam this the last time I saw him, it was last summer — and now when he sees me coming he already waves at me and says, ‘I know what you’re going to ask me!’” Schrempf said.
“And he always says: ‘We will have a team in Seattle.’
“And I told him the last couple years. I say: ‘You know, Adam, you’ve been saying this for been 10 years. For 10 years I’ve heard this. At All-Star Games. I’ve heard this at summer leagues. I’ve heard it at special events.
“We still have a really good fan base here that’s ready to go.
“But,” Schrempf said, sounding exasperated, “man...”
The latest in the drawn-out, 17-year saga of the Sonics returning to Seattle: Silver has said for the first time he expects the NBA’s Board of Governors, its team owners, to next month formally begin the process of expanding the league by two teams.
The commissioner told SiriusXM radio in May of the meeting he will host around the NBA Summer League in Las Vegas that runs July 10-20: “We have an NBA board meeting in July, in Las Vegas. And my sense is it will be on the agenda to discuss, with full ownership now for the 30 teams, to get directly the existing owners’ views on potential expansion.
“And (it would be) how we would begin further study of all the implications.”
The last time the league expanded, the process took two years. That was in 2004, from the time Charlotte applied for a team until the Bobcats (now the Hornets) tipped off as the NBA’s 30th team.
This spring Silver for at least the second time since 2023 named Seattle first as a “tremendous” candidate for a new team. Las Vegas is the favorite to get the NBA second expansion team and round the league into 32 teams.
That is, whenever the league gets around to expanding.
First, many around the league said the NBA was waiting to begin the expansion process on the new media-rights package to get done. That happened last summer.
Then it was that the league was waiting for the sale of Boston Celtics, to set a gauge for expansion-team valuation. The Celtics got sold this March, for $6 billion.
This month, the Los Angeles Lakers sold for $10 billion.
So what’s the holdup now?
Longtime NBA reporters Bill Simmons and Chris Mannix pointed at New York Knicks owner James Dolan, on Simmons’ podcast last week.
“You know who’s roadblocking them right now? James Dolan,” Simmons said. “He’s got a little cabal of anti-expansion owners, just because he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want to share the media rights.”
Adding Seattle and Las Vegas in expansion would divide the NBA revenue pie by 32 pieces, instead of the current 30. That pie includes the $76 billion the league and its owners are getting in the new media-rights contracts with ABC/ESPN, NBC/Peacock and Amazon. The media deal is for 11 years, beginning with the new season that starts this fall.
Sonics return ... in 2030?
Gary Washburn has been covering the NBA since he became the Sonics beat writer for the old Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2005. A year after the Sonics moved to Oklahoma City, Washburn moved to Boston to become the Boston Globe’s beat writer on the Celtics. He still has that job today.
He told the TNT on KJR this month he believes it could be through the end of this decade or the start of the 2030s before the reborn Sonics tip off inside Climate Pledge Arena.
“Now there’s kind of stability (in team ownership). The two benchmark franchises are now set,” Washburn said of the Celtics and Lakers. “Now you can really concentrate on expansion fees and ‘What’s it going to take?’
“And I do think that Seattle and Las Vegas are the favorites. Now, could you get a Kansas City or a Louisville? There’s been talk of maybe Mexico City; I don’t think that’s a possibility at this point.
“I think Seattle is the favorite. And the process will begin.
“Now, when will they tip off in Climate Pledge Arena? When will that happen?” Washburn said. “I would say probably more towards 2030. I don’t think it’s going to be any faster.”
Why so long?
“You guys have seen up there, this thing takes a while,” he said. “And Silver’s been talking about expansion for four or five years, and nothing has really happened. But I think now the process will begin. The bids will start.
“All that matters is, how much are these other owners — especially the ones in the smaller markets, the Portlands, the Detroits, the Clevelands — how much are they going to get out of this? (That’s what) is fueling this. That’s what will speed this process up.
“But I think more toward the end of the decade is where you will probably see the return of the Sonics.
“I don’t think Silver does anything fast. ... It’s all about what the owners say in that meeting (next month).
“If it is a couple years, it’s because the owners are pushing ... because they want to get their hands on those expansion fees.”
Seattle fans skeptical from waiting
Then-NBA commissioner David Stern and fellow owners abruptly deserted their league city of 48 years and moved the Sonics in 2008. That was two years after Seattle-based Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who bought the team in 2001 for $200 million, sold the Sonics for $350 million in 2006.
Given those cold moves that froze out Seattle’s NBA fans 20 years ago, many if not most who have been in the PNW more than a week are skeptical of the league’s intentions to return.
Despite what Silver has said, it’s what he and the league have done. So far, that is nothing toward getting Seattle back its Sonics.
It’s not just Sonics fans feeling this way. The team’s former players, especially those who still live here, share the doubt.
“If they come out of these talks again in July and say, ‘Well, this isn’t the right time,’ I’ll be very disappointed,” Schrempf said.
“And I’m not sure I’ll still be able to say it’s the best game in the world.”
Or as McMillan told the TNT on KJR last week: “Hey, let’s get the Sonics back, OK?”
The legend who’s been around the NBA for 65 years, who’s been ingrained in Seattle’s pro-basketball scene for the last 57 years, remains faithful the Sonics and the NBA are coming back to the Pacific Northwest. Soon.
“It’s what I’ve hoped for,” Wilken said. “It’s what I know will make a huge difference.
“So I’m just keeping my fingers crossed.”
This story was originally published July 1, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
