After scoring 27 points in the victory for team “Seattle” in the H206 Charity Basketball Classic over the weekend, Spencer Hawes led the crowd at KeyArena in a chant for the city to get back its pro hoops team. From the Seattle Times: “After a 2 ½-hour NBA exhibition that felt like a celebration of Seattle basketball, Philadelphia 76ers center Spencer Hawes grabbed the microphone and walked to midcourt. The former Washington Husky and Seattle Prep star, who shaved a silhouette of the Space Needle on the back of his head for this game, led a KeyArena crowd of 5,070 in a postgame rally cry. ‘I just want to leave y’all with one last thing,’ Hawes shouted. ‘Come home, Sonics! Come home, Sonics!’ The chant echoed around the building for a few seconds, but it remains to be seen if state politicians in Olympia or NBA executives in the league office in New York — the power brokers who could make Hawes’ demand a reality — were listening. ‘I sure hope those people could see what I saw today and feel what I felt,’ Hawes said. ‘It was real. It felt important. … Today proved Seattle will support a team whenever the time is right. It’s a good message and sometimes you need something, a catalyst to get the ball rolling. I don’t want to say this is going to be that, but we raised some money for a good cause and maybe this is the first step to bringing the Sonics back home. So in my book, it’s a win-win.'”