Spencer Hawes Wants Seattle to Have an NBA Team Again

After scoring 27 points in the victory for team “Seattle” in the H206 Charity Basketball Classic over the weekend, Spencer Hawes led the crowd at KeyArena in a chant for the city to get back its pro hoops team. From the Seattle Times: “After a 2 ½-hour NBA exhibition that felt like a celebration of Seattle basketball, Philadelphia 76ers center Spencer Hawes grabbed the microphone and walked to midcourt. The former Washington Husky and Seattle Prep star, who shaved a silhouette of the Space Needle on the back of his head for this game, led a KeyArena crowd of 5,070 in a postgame rally cry. ‘I just want to leave y’all with one last thing,’ Hawes shouted. ‘Come home, Sonics! Come home, Sonics!’ The chant echoed around the building for a few seconds, but it remains to be seen if state politicians in Olympia or NBA executives in the league office in New York — the power brokers who could make Hawes’ demand a reality — were listening. ‘I sure hope those people could see what I saw today and feel what I felt,’ Hawes said. ‘It was real. It felt important. … Today proved Seattle will support a team whenever the time is right. It’s a good message and sometimes you need something, a catalyst to get the ball rolling. I don’t want to say this is going to be that, but we raised some money for a good cause and maybe this is the first step to bringing the Sonics back home. So in my book, it’s a win-win.'”