I was seven years old the last time the Seattle SuperSonics existed. I remember watching the press conference on television as the team disappeared from my city, too young to understand exactly what had happened but old enough to know that something had been taken away. My dad told me not to worry. Seattle would get another team soon. I’m 25 now.
Nearly two decades later, that promise may finally be coming true. With the NBA preparing to expand to Seattle and Las Vegas in 2028, a generation of fans who grew up without the Sonics may finally get them back. But the franchise returning to Seattle will be entering a league almost unrecognizable from the one it left.
In 2008, the NBA belonged to superteams and dynasties. The Kobe-Shaq Lakers, Duncan’s Spurs, and the Celtics’ Big Three reflected a simple reality of basketball: with only five players on the floor and stars affecting both ends of the court, elite talent could overwhelm almost everything else. Build the best starting five and you could dominate the league for years. That formula no longer guarantees anything.
The modern NBA is an era of extraordinary parity. Eight years have produced eight different champions, with none returning the following season to defend its title. Look at the most recent champions. New York has perhaps one top-five player in Jalen Brunson and another top-20 player in Karl-Anthony Towns. The year before, Oklahoma City was built around Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and an extraordinarily deep supporting cast. Compared with the star collections that once ruled the NBA, neither starting roster looks overwhelming on paper.
The Sonics are not simply returning to the NBA. They are returning to a league in which the rules of building a champion have changed. Today, I want to go over what the Sonics should look out for, and how the modern NBA can inform our decisions on how to roster build.
First, NBA players have never been better. Centers can dribble. Wings can shoot the 3 reliably. Guards are not 6’5+. As the skill floor continues to rise, the ceiling has remained stagnant. As such, having the best player in the world does not mean as much as it did in years past. In many ways, it is no longer about who has the best player, its about who has the worst player. Depth is now king, not top tier superstar talent.
The best example of this phenomena is the Lakers. Despite having Luka, Austin, and LeBron all in the same starting 5, and having perhaps the best three headed monster of any team in the NBA, they can’t win games. When you have Jaxson Hayes, Bronny James, Adou Thiero, and Jarred Vanderbilt needing to actually contribute meaningful minutes in playoff games, you can’t win. Now that teams often have starter-caliber players in their bench rotation, lacking depth is as punishing as ever.
Secondarily, free agency has also changed the game. Prior to 2017, if you were a free agent all teams could offer you the same contract, there was no benefit for being the team that drafted you. That all changes after the 2017 CBA, where now only the team that drafted you is able to offer you the Supermax. This heavily incentivized players to not enter free agency, since not signing with their home team would cost them financially. If they wanted to move teams, they would need to force a sign-and-trade. This significantly reduced activity in free agency, making it substantially harder to improve your team in just one free agency. For reference, a 42-year-old LeBron James is likely the best free agent this cycle. With the Supermax change, the best players just won’t hit free agency at the same rate they did before.
Lastly, the NBA has substantially changed the draft. For most of NBA history, if you were the worst team in the league you had a disproportionally high chance of drafting first. Combine that with NBA being top heavy, with top tier talent being the most important commodity, and you have a recipe for tanking. Many teams throughout history won the championship by tanking for the best players in each draft. Sweeping changes have been made to the draft. Teams now cannot draft in the top 5 in consecutive years, and get penalized for being the worst in the league. Tanking has effectively been killed.
So when the Sonics finally return, patience may be the most important thing Seattle can give them. The temptation will be to chase the first superstar who becomes available, accelerate the timeline, and try to recreate the kind of contender that worked when the Sonics last played. But they are returning to a league that rewards something different. Depth matters more. Free agency offers fewer shortcuts. Tanking offers fewer guarantees. And draft picks have become one of the few reliable ways to build a roster that can survive all of it.
That means the Sonics should not be built around finding one player who can save the franchise. They should be built around finding players, over and over again.
When I was seven, my dad told me Seattle would get another team soon. Nearly twenty years later, “soon” turned out to be a little longer than either of us imagined. After waiting this long, though, I don’t want the Sonics to rush the part that comes next. Seattle has waited two decades to get its team back. We can wait a little longer for them to build it right.