Kevin Durant will play in Seattle for a preseason game, which seems cruel

For the first time since 2008, the NBA — and Kevin Durant — will return to Seattle. Unfortunately for basketball fans in the Pacific Northwest, it will only be for one night.

The Sacramento Kings will square off against Durant’s Golden State Warriors October 5 at Key Arena. It will be a preseason showdown between the defending NBA champions and what is technically another professional team. For the 2014 league MVP, the game is a homecoming to the city where he began his career. For the Kings, it’s an opportunity to see what they missed out on by staying in Sacramento.

Durant was drafted No. 2 overall in the 2007 NBA Draft by the Seattle Supersonics and played one year in Washington before new ownership led by Clay Bennett relocated the team from the west coast to Oklahoma City. The young star thrived in the plains, leaving Seattle fans to wonder “what if?” while their dynamic prospect developed into one of the league’s elite players. While Durant has returned on a nearly annual basis as part of Jamal Crawford’s annual Seattle Pro-Am, October’s tilt will be his first venture back to the city in an NBA uniform.

The city’s appetite for NBA basketball was nearly sated in 2013 when Washington billionaire Chris Hansen announced his intentions to purchase the Kings and move them north to fill the Sonics-shaped hole left in the hearts of Seattle’s basketball fans. Instead, league owners shot down that proposal and instead effectively forced a sale to Vivek Ranadive, who doubled-down on the troubled franchise’s commitment to Sacramento and kept Washington’s NBA fans wandering through the desert in search of a new team to serve as the resting place for their fandom.

Durant and the Kings, two major figures in the saga of Seattle basketball, will meet at KeyArena — the venue that helped drive a wedge between the Sonics’ ownership and the city. One of the key components behind Oklahoma City native Bennett’s argument for leaving Washington was the out-of-date facilities of the building, which was built in 1962. When citizens rejected the call to give a billionaire $500 million in tax money to construct a new stadium, Bennett effectively was given his opportunity to leave town with the city’s team tucked under his arm.

October’s exhibition game will take place in the midst of a $600 million renovation to KeyArena, which is aimed at adding another big four pro sports franchise — either from the NBA or NHL — to the city’s lineup.

So instead of getting actual basketball, fans in Seattle will see:

a) the superstar who was ripped from their city when the Sonics relocated, and
b) the team that was set to fill the void left by the Sonics, only for the NBA to shut down relocation talks late in the game to avoid another mess like the one it previously left in Seattle, and
c) meaningless preseason basketball, in
d) the aging arena whose outdated facilities helped create the excuse needed for the Sonics’ management to leave town.

Seems cruel.