SeaTown Sports: The Gary Payton Guarantee

Or you can call it the Gary Payton Prediction, whichever you prefer. Gary Payton raised the 12th Man flag on Sunday and has boldly predicted that the city of Seattle will have an NBA franchise by 2011. For those of you that are bad at math that is in four years.

Is this simply about Gary Payton's ego wanting to raise something other than the 12th man flag and raising his own number to be retired in Seattle? Is that necessarily a bad thing? The guy is a freaking sports saint in this town so whatever his motivation is, if he wants the NBA in Seattle, then I'll back him 100%.

What's his plan?

Mr. Payton is getting together with James Donaldson, a fellow former Sonic who conveniently is planning to run for a spot on the Seattle City Council. Along with Donaldson, Payton plans to get a group of NBA players that want to start a movement to get a team in Seattle. Who's in this group? Out of current NBA players I would put these guys on the spot for wanting the NBA in Seattle:

Spencer Hawes-Sacramento Kings
Brandon Roy- Portland Trailblazers
Nate Robinson- New York Knicks
Jamal Crawford- New York Knicks

I'm probably forgetting a lot of others but those four are probably guarantees. I could definetly imagine Payton working with Shawn Kemp and other Sonic Legends as well including Xavier McDaniel. If Payton is able to rally a group together to get the NBA back in Seattle I think David Stern will be defenseless. When current and retired players get together to petition their godly employer, something must be up.

Now you can start to fire up the rumor mills because Payton stated he's "inside" with the NBA and believes there are a lot of teams that "want" to move. Two teams that have a possibility of moving are the New Orleans Hornets and the Charlotte Bobcats. There has also been whisperings about the Memphis Grizzlies but for now, all of this is less than credible speculation...

Now you can look at Mr. Payton and regard his statement as foolish one that provides false hope for an already disgruntled Seattle sports scene. Or you could trust the man that is a Seattle sports icon. For me, I'm going with the carefully optimistic approach. If there is a physical team with uniforms that say Supersonics on them by the year 2011, we'll all know who to thank, Number 20, Gary Payton.

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photo source: [frontiernet] Sphere: Related Content