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Jonathan Jones: The Portland Trail Blazers are for sale. But in a statement, Paul Allen’s estate makes clear the Seattle Seahawks are not for sale.
Karl is sipping iced tea and soaking in a picturesque view of Seattle’s Elliott Bay on a sun-splashed Thursday. He lives in Denver but is in town to help promote, support and encourage Seattle’s candidacy should Silver and the NBA Board of Governors decide to proceed with expansion. As the Seahawks played host to the San Francisco 49ers at Lumen Field, Karl and former Sonics players Dale Ellis and Rashard Lewis attended a social event on the 75th floor of the Columbia Tower that included Seattle mayor Bruce Harrell, Seattle Sports Commission president and CEO Beth Knox and several business leaders. “It’s a lot of anticipation; I feel like we are hanging on the edge of our seats, waiting,” Knox said. “We are ready.”
Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups played football during his elementary school years, and although he became a basketball legend in Colorado and had a long career in the NBA, he remains a fan of football. So it shouldn’t be surprising that Billups would travel north and pay a visit to the Seattle Seahawks on Tuesday.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll said the two spent time together at the Seahawks practice facility. “We had a really fun day together, hanging out all morning. It was cool,” Carroll told reporters Tuesday. “It was really fun having him here and to just kick it around. We were in the office just watching film and doing stuff all day long.”
Seahawks wide receiver Tyler Lockett is pretty well-prepared for the day when he eventually has to retire from the NFL. In addition to running a growing real estate business in the Seattle area, Lockett is eager to add other items to his post-football portfolio. Yesterday on Twitter, Lockett responded to a Steph Curry quote on the NBA returning to Seattle, saying he’d want to be a part of any ownership group for an expansion team.
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“Seattle’s a hoop city — that’s our sport,” former NBA lottery pick and Seattle native Spencer Hawes who spent 10 seasons in the NBA from 2007-17 told The Athletic. “I love the Seahawks. I mean, I’m as big a fan as anybody. But I always tell people at the end of the day, this is a basketball town.”
Clippers head coach Tyronn Lue is best friends with Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, and both teams are owned by figures who have ties to the Seattle area. Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer is the former CEO of Microsoft, and Jody Allen was named chair of the Portland Trail Blazers and Seattle Seahawks following the 2018 death of her brother Paul G. Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. Lue, who played in the last NBA regular-season game in Seattle with the Dallas Mavericks in 2008, played an instrumental role in getting the Clippers to Seattle for the preseason. “Something we talked about me and Chauncey, just talked about in the summertime about just trying to get into the same city and we could have a few days of training camp and play some games and kind of be together to hang out, and we said ‘What better place than Seattle?‘” Lue said Friday. “His owner is here in Seattle, Mr. Ballmer’s here in Seattle, so we thought it was a no-brainer. We’re just glad we were able to get it together and here they are.”
LA Clippers superstar Kawhi Leonard spent his Sunday watching NFL football between the San Francisco 49ers and Seattle Seahawks. Having just returned from New York, where he made an appearance at New York Fashion Week and the US open, the star forward is making the most of his last few weeks before training camp.
The Claw x The Goat pic.twitter.com/pmh2vaQFgt
— San Francisco 49ers (@49ers) September 18, 2022
"I think he was one of the first players that I watched from start to finish," Wagner said. "He was somebody that I looked up to growing up. Obviously his untimely death hit the world. And I felt like with me coming back to L.A., I think it was just a way to honor somebody that's done a lot in my life that he probably didn't even know." Wagner said he met Bryant thanks to his "good friend" Richard Sherman, who was his teammate with the Seattle Seahawks.
Luminaries in the crowd included Hall of Fame player and coach Lenny Wilkens, LA Clippers chairman Steve Ballmer, several former Seattle Seahawks (Cliff Avril, Marcus Trufant and K.J. Wright) and members of both the Seattle Storm and Washington Mystics -- who practiced elsewhere in the building earlier Saturday ahead of Game 2 of their WNBA playoff series on Sunday.
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Blazers to be auctioned in the next few months?
Paul Allen died in October 2018. His luxury yachts and some real estate holdings have already been liquidated. But the fate of his NBA and NFL franchises still hang in the balance. Insiders expect the Blazers to be positioned for auction in the next 6-18 months. The Seahawks could follow shortly after, but sources say Jody Allen may be wrangling to keep a piece of the NFL franchise.
The greatest tight end in the NFL believes LeBron James would have thrived as a pro football player ... 'cause Travis Kelce tells TMZ Sports the King would've been a serious "problem" in the league if he didn't become a basketball icon. LBJ recently revealed he received offers to play for the Dallas Cowboys and Seattle Seahawks during the 2011 NBA lockout ... and said he would have likely tried out at tight end if he decided to play football.
It is well-documented that football was Edwards’ first love, so much so that it was misconstrued before the draft to mean that he didn’t love basketball as much as a No. 1 overall pick should. That has been disproven all season long by the joy with which Edwards plays, but his eyes still lit up on Saturday night when the subject came up. “I (would) probably be like a Kam Chancellor, but I wouldn’t be that much hard of a hitter though,” Edwards said, referring to the safety who was a member of the Seattle Seahawks’ famed “Legion of Boom” secondary. “I wouldn’t be too much of the boom part.”
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