After a severely challenging, COVID-hampered 2020, it wasn't altogether surprising to hear NBA Commissioner Adam Silver openly muse with reporters at year's end about the potential for adding a new franchise or two to help shore up the league's finances.

"I'd say it's caused us to maybe dust off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion," Silver said back in December. "We've been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic."

While not necessarily a fait accompli, it is still a remarkable turn of strategic thinking that immediately sent local tongues wagging in multiple North American cities from Las Vegas to Louisville to even Mexico City and Montreal.

But few would argue that the aggrieved city of Seattle - losers of the much-beloved SuperSonics in the summer of 2008 to a carpet-bagging ownership group from Oklahoma City - should be the first in line for a new club when the NBA is officially ready.

Author Jon Finkel ("Hoops Heist: Seattle, the Sonics and How a Stolen Team's Legacy Gave Rise to the NBA's Secret Empire") helps us bolster the case for big-time basketball's return to the Emerald City - through the eyes of both Sonics' legends like Lenny Wilkens, Spencer Haywood, Gary Payton, Shawn Kemp & Ray Allen, as well as via home-grown players like Isaiah Thomas, Brandon Roy, Doug Christie, Jason Terry, Nate Robinson & Jamal Crawford - who all came of age in the Sonics' shadow and now define the modern-day NBA.

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Hoops Heist: Seattle, the Sonics and How a Stolen Team’s Legacy Gave Rise to the NBA’s Secret Empire - buy book here