This is starting to annoy me.

The NBA franchise leaving Seattle for Oklahoma City is being treated by various and sundry observers as an injustice that borders on the criminal.

OK, it’s not a nice thing. Leaving a city after 41 seasons.

But do any of you recall any sort of nationwide condemnation and gnashing of teeth when Los Angeles lost both of its NFL teams in a matter of months, after the 1994 season? One of which, the Rams, had been in town for 49 (!) seasons?

Why the double standard? Why is Seattle poor and downtrodden and abused by the NBA? While the Rams and Raiders bolting … is “just something that happened” to Los Angeles?

Let’s just stipulate that is what’s going on. Wailing and moaning on Seattle’s behalf. Silence and even sniggering, toward L.A.

How come?

I have some ideas.

1. Seattle is cute and cuddly. It’s not a city that leaves other major-league cities all jealous. Nice downtown, progressive place. Sure. But it rains all year and it’s not the center of any major industry (unless coffee is an industry) since the decline of grunge rock … So outsiders are comfortable rising to Seattle’s defense.

2. Seattle Did the Right Thing by waiting for expansion franchises. The Sonics, the Mariners, the Seahawks. All just awarded to the city, thank you very much.

3. L.A., meanwhile, has a history of taking/accepting other people’s franchises. The Rams, Dodgers, Lakers, Clippers, Raiders, in that order. Only the Angels, Kings and Ducks, among this area’s “major league” franchises, were expansion teams.

So no pity for you if you lose one of those “stolen” teams to someone else.

4. Los Angeles is threatening. It certainly isn’t small and weak and some marginal market. A lot of people don’t like L.A. or what they believe it represents. And if it loses teams (for much the same reasons that Seattle lost the Sonics; owners with interests elsewhere, looking to cash in on a great stadium deal) — well, you’re on your own. Mr. ESPN Columnist isn’t going to rush to L.A.’s defense.

Let’s just recap some of the realities of these situations:

1. Seattle is a marginal major-league city. It lost its original ball team (the Pilots) to Milwaukee because the city didn’t support it. The Mariners were the second go-round. The NHL has expanded all over the continent but never bothered to go to Seattle. Hmm.

Seattle attendance is generally modest, middle-of-the-pack, and its corporate sponsorship is nothing special. It seems to be hurting for local owners, too, if the Sonics were purchased by a guy from Oklahoma City and the Mariners are owned by a Japanese company.

If “civic support” for a franchise is a factor in competitive success, and I believe it is, Seattle is a massive failure because it has exactly one championship (the Sonics, 1979) in a major-league sport.

2. L.A. “stole” its teams at a time when the distribution of major-league franchises was completely out of whack with the nation’s demographics. Hide-bound baseball was stuck on its original 16 franchises, never having gotten further west than St. Louis into the 1950s. Moving a team from a hugely overserved region (the Dodgers were one of three MLB teams in greater New York City) to the virgin territory of the West Coast made perfect sense. The Rams were dying on the vine in Cleveland, which also had the Browns. The Raiders were keen to escape Oakland. Let’s see, an NBA team in Minneapolis or Los Angeles (which had just opened the Sports Arena)? How tough a call is that?

Is it somehow L.A.’s fault that it was attractive, at the time?

Of course not. And the city wouldn’t even have been so wide open if baseball and basketball leagues had realized, in the 1950s, that they really did need to be on the West Coast and awarded expansion franchises of the sort they were to begin to bestow liberally in the 1960s. That is, after L.A. (and San Francisco) demonstrated the viability of West Coast franchises.

It’s just hypocritical. All the wailing on Seattle’s behalf, when all it did was suffer the same fate that would have befallen other cities — had those other cities not capitulated to ownership demands for new facilities/leases.

Part of this is the realization that, “Hey, wait, it could happen to my team too!” Maybe if the condemnation of the league is vigorous enough, “my team” will stay in Salt Lake City/Kansas City forever, too.
The reality is, if your marketplace is no longer attractive, watch out. But at least you can expect nearly universal condemnation, of your departing team, and lots of sympathy for your plight.

Unless you’re Los Angeles. Then, apparently, you’re on your own.