Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Clippers and Blazers to play preseason game in Seattle

The floor and seating areas of Climate Pledge Arena are shown Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, during a media tour ahead of the NHL hockey Seattle Kraken's home opener Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks in Seattle.
Ted S. Warren
/
The Associated Press
FILE - The floor and seating areas of Climate Pledge Arena are shown Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021, during a media tour ahead of the NHL hockey Seattle Kraken's home opener Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks in Seattle.

SEATTLE (AP) — The NBA is returning to Seattle — for the preseason, that is.

The Portland Trail Blazers and Los Angeles Clippers will play a preseason game at Seattle’s Climate Pledge Arena on Oct. 3, the teams announced Wednesday.

It will be the first NBA event since the former KeyArena was gutted and reconstructed as the home of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken and WNBA’s Seattle Storm.

The final event in the previous version of the building was a NBA preseason game between the Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings in October 2018. That game was the first NBA event in the arena after the departure of the SuperSonics for Oklahoma City following the 2008 season.

Clippers president of business operations Gillian Zucker said the idea for playing the game in Seattle was the brainchild of Los Angeles coach Ty Lue and Portland coach Chauncey Billups, who have been longtime friends.

The game between the Blazers and Clippers is being dubbed the “Rain City Showcase” and has significant Seattle ties. Clippers owner Steve Ballmer was the former head of Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft. The Blazers are owned by the family trust of the late Paul Allen, which also owns the Seattle Seahawks.

The Associated Press (“AP”) is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. On any given day, more than half the world’s population sees news from the AP. Founded in 1846, the AP today is one of the largest and most trusted sources of independent newsgathering. The AP considers itself to be the backbone of the world’s information system, serving thousands of daily newspaper, radio, television, and online customers with coverage in text, photos, graphics, audio and video.