Seattle, Vancouver and a string of other cities have watched an NBA team pack up and leave. In most cases the club carried its name out of town; in one the city kept the name and lost the team; in another the name came home years later without the club ever returning. The league has moved a franchise only 24 times, and the residue is still on sale: 22 listings in our own catalogue carry the wordmark of a city that no longer fields a club. Below is the full ledger of those moves, the four cities worth a closer look, and where Seattle stands in 2026.
Every city on this list still has fans, and most of them still have players. What they no longer have is the team, which is why their name sits on a jersey rather than a fixture list.
Every NBA franchise that changed cities
Twenty-four times an NBA franchise has relocated, and the table below is the whole list, from the first post-war move to the most recent. Three of the entries started life in the American Basketball Association before the 1976 merger folded that league into the NBA, which is why you will see Chicago, New Jersey and Dallas appear here. Two more entries changed the city and the name at the same time, and one franchise split its home games between two states for a season.
Read down that list and one pattern stands out. Almost none of these moves were about basketball. Seattle was an arena problem, Vancouver was a currency problem, New Jersey was a building problem, and Buffalo was a market that had run out of room. The teams that moved were rarely the teams that were losing.
What each one left behind, wordmark for wordmark
The photographs below are our own shots of the chest area, cropped tight to the city wordmark. They are the clearest way to see the point: on each of these jerseys the city name is the largest thing on the chest, which is exactly why the garment still identifies a place that no longer has a team.
The Sonics arrived as an expansion club in 1967, named after the supersonic airliner then being built in the city, and left after 41 seasons with a 1,745 win, 1,585 loss record, 22 playoff appearances and three trips to the Finals. They won the 1979 championship and gave the city its first major professional sports title since the 1917 Seattle Metropolitans. The wordmark on the white and green set above is the one the club wore through its final years.
The Grizzlies were the league's second Canadian expansion club, alongside Toronto, and paid 125 million dollars for the right. They played every home game at General Motors Place, won 101 and lost 359, and never reached the playoffs. A weak Canadian dollar after the 1998 lockout turned the ownership group's books red, and the club was sold to a new owner who moved it to Tennessee.
The Nets franchise has crossed state lines twice. It came out of the American Basketball Association as the New Jersey Americans, became the New York Nets in 1968, moved across the Hudson to New Jersey in 1977, and crossed back to New York state again in 2012 to play in Brooklyn. The arched New Jersey wordmark above is the one Vince Carter wore in navy during the 2006/07 season.
The Warriors franchise started in Philadelphia, reached the Bay Area in 1962 and crossed to Oakland in 1971, changing its name to Golden State in the same breath. The club played in San Francisco again from 2019 while keeping the Golden State name, which makes it the one franchise on this list that has moved out of a city and back into it. The gold wordmark above is the 1962/63 set.
When the city kept the club, or the club kept the name
Two cases from the ledger do not fit the pattern of a club leaving town, and they are the most instructive. In Washington the club never moved at all: it was renamed, and the city got a different badge for the same franchise. In Charlotte the club did leave, the name went with it, and then the name came back on its own.
- 1Washington kept the team and changed the name. The franchise began as the Chicago Packers in 1961, became the Zephyrs a year later, moved to Baltimore in 1963, crossed into the Capital Region at Landover in 1973 and was called the Washington Bullets from 1974 until 1997. The blue, white and red set with the stars and stripes that the club wore in that stretch is the look most fans still remember, and the club won the 1978 championship under that name.
- 2Charlotte got the name back without the club. The Hornets played in Charlotte from 1988, moved to New Orleans in 2002, and in 2013 the New Orleans club became the Pelicans and handed the Hornets name over. In 2014 the board approved the change back, so the expansion club that had been the Bobcats became the Hornets again and reclaimed the records from the 1988 to 2002 seasons. New Orleans kept its own run from 2002 to 2013.
- 3Seattle was left holding the brand. When the settlement that let the SuperSonics leave was reached in July 2008, the name, the colours and the logo stayed behind in the city and could not be used in Oklahoma City, while the franchise history went with the club and would be shared with any future Seattle team.
There is a useful buying lesson buried in that last one. A jersey carrying the SuperSonics wordmark is not just a retro garment, it is a garment whose identity is legally still parked in the city it names. If Seattle ever gets a club back, that wordmark becomes the most valuable thing on the shelf.
Seattle and Las Vegas are back on the board
On 25 March 2026 the board of governors voted to formally explore expansion into Seattle and Las Vegas, two markets with long histories in the league, and hired an investment bank as strategic adviser. The commissioner was careful with his wording, saying the league was exploring rather than committing, and that the outcome could be no new team, one new team or two. A vote of this kind needs 23 of the 30 governors, and the league has said it wants a decision by the end of the year, with 2028-29 the earliest season anyone has discussed.
The two markets are not in the same place. Las Vegas has three bidding groups in the final round and a price tag reported in the region of 12 to 13 billion dollars including a new arena, and the league is expected to deal with the Vegas decision first. Seattle's bid has been reported as trailing the money, and one ownership group would build on the Tulalip reservation rather than use the arena downtown. In October the commissioner went further than the spring announcement, saying the league was looking closely at returning to Seattle and that the city's arena was already in a state of the art that would need very little work.
For a shopper, the practical question is easier than the political one. If a club is awarded to Seattle and the SuperSonics name is restored, every Sonics jersey in circulation suddenly describes a franchise that exists again. That is the same mechanism that pushed Charlotte Hornets prices up in 2014, and it is why the retro Sonics listings in our catalogue are worth a second look before the decision lands.
A census of 4,969 product titles
We scanned our entire catalogue, every product we list, and counted the titles that carry the wordmark of a city that has lost its team. Twenty-two listings out of 4,969 do, which is a fraction of one percent. That is the honest scale of this corner of the market, and it also means a shopper who wants one of these is choosing from a short list rather than browsing a long one.
Two details in that table are worth a second look. New Jersey is the only one of the five with more than one player and more than one colourway, and it is also the only city where we stock youth, women's and big-and-tall versions of the same heritage design. Seattle, by contrast, is concentrated on a single 1994/95-era design in green and white, which is the set the club wore around its last championship window.
Three questions to settle before you order
- 1Which city, and which year? The label carries the season, and the season decides the collar, the trim and the colourway. If you want the look the club wore in its best years, the 1994/95 and 1998/99 sets are the ones that come out of our shelves most often.
- 2Which build? The heritage line and the everyday line are cut and weighed differently, and the heat-sealed and twill comparison sets the two side by side. The fan version and replica guide covers which one you want to wear rather than display.
- 3Which size? Big-and-tall and women's cuts exist for some of these designs and not others, and the adult sizing guide explains the two measurements that decide it, while the youth sizing guide covers the reduced youth cut.
If you are starting from a team rather than a city, our historic and relocated teams page pulls the five city collections together, and the throwback range covers the wider retro shelf. For the design side of dating a jersey, the collar and sleeve guide is the page that shows you what a given era looks like at the neck.
Start with the city
Twenty-two listings across five cities, from 1962/63 to 2006/07.
Frequently Asked Questions
Five questions that come up when a jersey names a city with no team in it.
Q1Why did the Seattle SuperSonics leave Seattle?
The ownership group could not get public money for a new arena and wanted out of the KeyArena lease, so it asked the league for permission to move to Oklahoma City. The board approved the relocation in April 2008 and the club started there the following season under a new name.
Q2Can I still buy a jersey for a team that no longer exists in that city?
Yes, and that is exactly what the heritage lines are for. We keep retro reproductions of Seattle SuperSonics, Vancouver Grizzlies, Washington Bullets and San Francisco Warriors jerseys in stock, in the colourways those clubs actually wore in the years shown on the label.
Q3Which NBA cities lost a team and never got one back?
Seattle and Vancouver are the two most recent examples, and both have been discussed as expansion candidates. Buffalo, Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Fort Wayne are older cases, and none of those cities has an NBA club now.
Q4What happened to the Charlotte Hornets name?
The club moved to New Orleans in 2002 and renamed itself the Pelicans in 2013, handing the Hornets name back. Charlotte took it in 2014 and reclaimed the records from the 1988 to 2002 seasons, while New Orleans kept its own run.
Q5Is Seattle getting an NBA team back?
The league voted in March 2026 to explore expansion in Seattle and Las Vegas, and the commissioner said in October that the city is being looked at closely. Nothing is approved yet, so treat it as live rather than settled.