A History of Relocation

There has been a lot of relocation in the NBA's history, and not all of it in the distant past. This map shows all of the moves since 1951, when the Tri-Cities Hawks moved to Milwaukee after one season in Moline, Illinois. (We're counting 1950 as the birth of the actual NBA; the Blackhawks actually played in a lesser version in the NBA in 1949, and had originally come to Illinois from Buffalo.) Both those Hawks and the Kings have moved three times -- the Hawks went Moline to Milwaukee to St. Louis to Atlanta, while the Kings went from Rochester to Cincinnati to Kansas City to Sacramento. (And nearly to Anaheim or Seattle after that.) But the furthest move can be claimed by the Warriors, who in 1962 moved from Philadelphia to the Bay Area, a 2,900-mile jaunt. A year later, Philly landed the Syracuse Nationals, who became the 76ers. We didn't include the Nets' slip from New Jersey to Brooklyn because the Nets had practically been in New York all along. As such, the shortest relocation we count: when the Bullets moved 38 miles from Baltimore to D.C. in 1973.