The wait for the return of the Sonics will have to be a little longer. Today the NBA Relocation Committee voted unanimously voted to keep the Kings in Sacramento. While this isn’t the end all, it is a pretty huge sign that the City of Sacramento will be keeping the Kings.

The final BOG vote is on May 13th, and I highly doubt that they will be going against the Committee’s recommendation. After all, the Relocation Committee was created to go through and vet these plans so that all of the League’s 30 owners didn’t really have to; in other words, it was created to streamline the process. So now we have the Committee’s recommendation…and it doesn’t bode well for Sonics fans…but then their is these reports (including one from our friend Tim Montemayor);

Re Seattle and Kings, talk in playoff press room NBA might expand by two teams. Might

— Art Spander (@artspander) April 29, 2013

Source "The #NBA will work the next few weeks to find the solution that brings the game back to #Seattle …nothing is over"

— YouTube: The Monty Show —SUBSCRIBE (@TheMontyShow) April 29, 2013

So…it sounds like the NBA is seeing the solution that most people saw months ago…or the solution that I’ve been pretty much calling for from the get go;

“Expansion to Seattle is still an option; Seattle is a market in need of a real regional sports network, and it sounds like Hansen is going to create one as part of the Sonics’s return. The income from that RSN would be able to help keep the franchise financially afloat and means that it wouldn’t need a huge chunk of the revenue sharing. Also, people keep bringing up the fact that the league was talking contraction during the CBA negotiations; stop, it was just a negotiating ploy to force the players union to take a more generous deal for the owners (who needed it, the majority of the league was swimming in red ink). Then of course there’s the fact that the owners split relocation and expansion fees; a relocation fee is probably going to be around $30-$70 million, while an expansion fee would be anywhere from $350-$450 million.”-Sports with Neil

I don’t think the fight to get the Sonics back is dead, I think this fight is at the beginning of the end stage and that we will soon be having a Kings-Sonics rivalry.

And what a great rivalry that will be.