With the talk of the Las Vegas Golden Knights making the Stanley Cup, let’s see what an expansion team might look like in the NBA. Of course, they would be in Seattle, and they would be called the Supersonics. When Seattle gets basketball back, they’ll be fully equipped with green and yellow uniforms with an expansion roster plus a couple of draft picks. Much like the NHL did with Vegas, we tighten up the expansion rules and only allowed teams to keep four players. Seattle could draft 10 players versus 14 like they did with Toronto and Vancouver. Here’s the team I developed for the Supersonics.

Starting lineup: Eric Bledsoe, Spencer Dinwiddie, Reggie Bullock, Bobby Portis, Al Horford
Bench: T.J. McConnell, Will Barton, Josh Hart, Marqueese Chriss, Henry Giles

Is that an NBA championship roster? No, it’s not. Could they make the playoffs? Absolutely. They have enough talent there to be a pretty good team out the gate for the league. Even though Seattle is hungry as hell for a basketball team, it makes sense to give the expansion team a deeper pool of players. With notable players like Horford, Bledsoe, Portis, fans are more likely to attend regularly assuming this would be a 35 to 45 win team. The NHL wanted to give Vegas a fun team out the gate to build a fanbase as they had none compared to Seattle which has a pro basketball base that’s hungry for a team. It’s a smart business move by Gary Bettman, which isn’t something we say very often.

NBA will soon probably have Seattle in the league. The question is will it be an expansion team or will they move some team from their home? It’s probably the latter sadly enough but we’ll see what happens in years to come. Look forward to the Supersonics being a thing again.

Charlie.