Sure, it’s been 18 years since Seattle last hosted a regular-season NBA game, but the city didn’t go more than two months between hoop-legend statue dedications last summer.

A bronze likeness of Lenny Wilkens, the Hall of Fame SuperSonics player and coach, was unveiled in June along the street named for him outside the gleaming Climate Pledge Arena. Not long after, plans were made for an August unveiling for a statue of Sue Bird, the Seattle Storm icon, on the arena’s west plaza.

The bronze Wilkens palms a bronze basketball with his right hand, his eyes forever scanning the court. The bronze Bird is mid-layup, a nod to the way she scored her first and last points in the WNBA.

“I knew Lenny was going to be playmaking off the dribble,” Bird said at her statue’s unveiling. “We need someone to get that assist, so someone has to take the shot.”

Bird, 45, was the cornerstone point guard for each of the Storm’s four championship teams. She helped make Seattle a pro basketball beacon even without the NBA; three of the Storm’s titles have come since Clay Bennett ripped the Sonics from their rightful home and installed the franchise in Oklahoma City (with an assist from former owner Howard Schultz, the Starbucks CEO who abdicated his civic responsibility by selling the team to someone who did not intend to keep it here).

Our two-statue summer represents more than longing. Wilkens achieved legendary status playing and coaching for a franchise that no longer exists, but his 700-pound likeness now lives outside an arena redeveloped at least in part to help entice them back. And Bird became a bona fide superstar playing for one of the WNBA’s best-supported franchises, one that drew a sellout crowd of 18,100 fans to that same building for her final game. In 2024, the Storm opened a $64 million practice facility in Interbay, the first of its kind for a WNBA team.

What made the Sonics’ departure most galling—the city’s undying appreciation for the sport—is also what helps keep the flame burning without the NBA. Civic hoops pride is bigger than just one team. Jamal Crawford’s CrawsOver Pro-Am League has drawn the best players in the world, including an appearance by LeBron James for which fans camped out overnight on the campus of Seattle Pacific University. Former Sonic Kevin Durant’s 63-point Summer League game in 2013 won’t be forgotten, either.

Longtime boys basketball power Rainier Beach High School captured that same spirit this past season. Then they drew overflow crowds en route to another state championship, led by senior Tyran Stokes, the nation’s no. 1–ranked prospect, and freshman J.J. Crawford, son of Jamal, a Beach alum. It wasn’t so different when Michael Porter Jr., who won an NBA championship with the Denver Nuggets, was dunking his way to an unbeaten season and a state championship playing for Nathan Hale High in 2017 (a team coached by Brandon Roy, of Garfield and University of Washington fame).

Around the same time, UW became the first school ever to produce the no. 1 pick in both the NBA Draft (Markelle Fultz) and WNBA Draft (Kelsey Plum) in the same year. Plum, by the way, finished her career as the NCAA’s all-time leading scorer, and guided the Huskies to their first Final Four appearance (and, of course, became a WNBA star and Olympic gold medalist). The city of Seattle produced its own no. 1 pick five years later, when the Orlando Magic selected former O’Dea star Paolo Banchero, later the NBA’s Rookie of the Year—further proof that you can take the league out of Seattle but you can’t take Seattle out of the league. 

Assuming it (finally) happens—it’s good news if the NBA commissioner is Zooming with the governor these days, right?—the Sonics’ return would no doubt be cause for celebration. We got pretty excited when the NBA Board of Governors voted in March to explore expansion to Seattle and Las Vegas. But the fact that our hoops culture thrived without the Sonics is testament to just how deserving Seattle is of an NBA franchise.