We all know the story of the “Zombie Sonics” and how they left/were stolen from the city of Seattle. I won’t complain about it anymore than I already have. However, the situation we in Seattle are now faced with should give us pause.

Chris Hansen and a handful of other billionaires/millionaires are in the position to build an arena and purchase an NBA team to come play in Seattle once again. We should be happy, right? Our SuperSonics will rise from the ashes like a phoenix and once again compete in the NBA. But where will this team come from? It likely won’t be an expansion team or a team coming from a city that doesn’t want them. No, the most likely event is that the city of Seattle and its private financial backers will follow the Clay Bennett method of acquiring and moving an NBA franchise, and the most likely victims seem to be the city of Sacramento and their beloved Kings.

There are two important considerations to be made between the loss of the Sonics to Oklahoma City and the possible taking of the Kings to Seattle. The first is that the original Sonics were founded in 1967 as an expansion team. They never played anywhere else before moving to Seattle, making the fan base all the more rabid. They were originally ours, not skipping around the country or relocating every 10 years until they found a good market. They were not adopted. They were our original creation, which made their departure all the more heartbreaking.

The Kings on the other hand skipped around from Rochester, New York to Cincinnati to Kansas City and Omaha before finally landing in Sacramento in 1985. This isn’t to say that their current fans are any less committed to their team. They have great fans, a filmmaker name James Ham who produced a film about efforts to keep the team in Sacramento and runs a website to the same effect (Sonicsgate, anyone?), and former NBA point guard Kevin Johnson as mayor. However, their team did once belong elsewhere, with fans and support that just wasn’t enough from a financial standpoint. Unfortunately for Rochester, Cincinnati, Kansas City and Omaha (and now Seattle), financial decisions rarely take into account matters of the heart.

The other important consideration is that the Kings are the only professional level franchise in Sacramento. When the Sonics left Seattle, their fans still had the Sounders, the Mariners, and the Seahawks to root for. It was not the end of local pro sports. The Thunder in Oklahoma City are now that state’s only pro sports franchise, making the Thunder fans all the more enthusiastic and committed for to their adopted heroes.

If the powers that be are successful in taking the Kings away from Sacramento and rebranding them the SuperSonics 2.0, we will have ripped away from Kings fans the only pro sports franchise they have, their only-child, to make an apt comparison. Though Kings fans may not be known throughout the U.S. as fanatically loyal, they are still real people who support their team, and their feelings should still be considered when, not if, Seattle decides to try and take their team away. Two wrongs do not make a right in Sacramento or anywhere else.

Of course, there are many “ifs” in the ongoing drama of whether Seattle will get a team, what team that will be, who is building how expensive of an arena to lure or keep a team in their city, and which side NBA Commissioner David Stern will take once the chips are down. It seems like Stern has near-dictatorial powers when it comes to the internal affairs of the NBA, and I don’t think Seattle fans should consider it a blessing if he robs Sacramento the same way he robbed Seattle only a few years ago.

I sincerely hope that Seattle gets an NBA team soon. I just hope that it doesn’t come at the expense of the fans of another franchise. We know too well the heartbreak that comes with your team being unfairly ripped from your loving clutches. It’s a feeling we wouldn’t want any other group of committed fans to experience. How are we any better than Stern and Bennett if we support such a thing?