Gary Payton’s NBA career has been over for a while now but he still holds the city that drafted him close to his heart. Payton was drafted by the Seattle Supersonics but the team was moved to Oklahoma City and renamed as the Thunder. Seattle and its fans have since been fighting to get a team back in the city, but have been unsuccessful. Payton is the latest person trying to get the task done, and he knows he has to start by getting an arena.
The former NBA star spoke about his plans with SLAM magazine at the #DewNBA3X tour this past weekend in LA.
.@GaryPayton_20 is trying to bring an NBA franchise back to Seattle. We spoke with him in LA at #DewNBA3X, where he touched on the efforts. pic.twitter.com/ER7RuDx3u1
— SLAM Magazine (@SLAMonline) October 23, 2016
“I’m trying to get something back in Seattle to get us back a basketball team,” Payton told SLAM in Santa Monica. “We got to get us an arena. We gotta make the NBA understand we want our team back. We got to get an arena. That will make it more enticing for the NBA to come back. I’m never going to lose hope to get our team back. We deserve a basketball team. We should have never lost our basketball team but it happened. We’re going to try to keep going and let these fans understand that, Hey, you deserve a basketball team and we’re going to give it to you some day again.”
