Garnett dreams of buying 'Sonics, returning NBA to Seattle: 'It's essential'

Kevin Garnett is most strongly associated with the Minnesota Timberwolves, with whom he played his first 12 NBA seasons, and the Boston Celtics, the team with which he captured his lone title in 2008.

But if it were up to Garnett, the recently named 2020 Basketball Hall of Fame inductee would continue his basketball life with an organization that doesn't technically exist at the moment.

"If I have a dream, I would say that I would love to be able to go and buy the Seattle SuperSonics and reactivate the (Pacific) Northwest and get NBA loving back going into that area," Garnett told The Associated Press' Tim Reynolds. "I think it's needed and it's essential. Seattle was huge to our league. ... I would love to be able to do that."

The SuperSonics joined the NBA for the 1967-68 season and enjoyed consistent success until their relocation to become the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2008. The team boasted a number of future Hall of Famers, including Lenny Wilkins (as both a player and coach), Spencer Haywood, Jack Sikma, Gary Payton, and Ray Allen - Garnett's eventual teammate in Boston. Seattle made The Finals on three occasions, winning it all in 1979.

Garnett may actually be one of the few players for whom owning a sizeable chunk of an NBA team is within the realm of possibility. Though the prime of his career came before the dramatic spike in player salaries that occurred during the 2010s, "The Big Ticket" still ranks first among all players in career earnings; Garnett amassed an estimated $334.3 million in salary from 1995-2016.