That the NBA will ultimately return to Seattle seems inevitable. The only question is the timing. It needs to be sooner rather than later. And maybe it will be.
There is no need to wait until the end of the current television deal with the league’s network partners in 2024. That has been the expected minimum timeline before NBA governors would seriously begin to contemplate adding one or two new teams to the current 30. Until around March 11, 2020, there was no momentum for doing so before 2024; if ESPN and Turner Sports (and, presumably, other potential suitors, including streaming possibilities from the likes of Netflix or Amazon) could inject additional billions of dollars in revenues to teams in excess of the $24 billion they’re currently sharing from their national television partners, there would be no need to further dilute competitive balance through expansion.
But, then came COVID-19.
The hundreds of millions of dollars that teams have…
