Last night marked the start of the NBA’s 62nd season, but for the first time in 42 years, the city of Seattle won’t be a part of it.

All that’s left from the team formerly known as the Sonics is the name, the history, the colors and a civic void that Clay Bennett’s pockets, no matter how deep, will never fill.

But for the NBA-diehards forced into Blazers submission, there appears to be a glimmer of hope on the horizon.

Here’s how the pipe dream could play out: professional sports becomes the most pressing issue at hand for state lawmakers when they meet in January. Deficit schmeficit.

Another tax diversion proposal, this time aimed at the city’s hotel-motel tax, is miraculously whisked through legislation — third time’s a charm — to get Key Arena renovated.

A private ownership group headed by Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, content with the city’s allocation of $75 million through the tax, agrees to foot another $150 million. An additional $75 million would come from admission taxes, should this Mecca of roundball be built.

NBA Commissioner David Stern, with the smuggest of smug grins intact, is so happy he decides Seattle can have one of his financially unstable franchises — think Charlotte, Memphis, New Orleans or Milwaukee.

NBA basketball returns to Seattle and everyone forgets how crappy Adam Morrison is and how the whole Seattle-to-Oklahoma City thing felt.

This is basically the best chance the city has to reclaim an NBA team. How Super-Ironic.

Seattle fans believed former Sonics owner Howard Schultz when he unveiled his five-year plan for creating a title-contending team — a plan that ended with a 35-47 finish in 2005-06.

They believed Schultz when, upon selling his team for $150 million in profit to an out-of-towner, he said the new owner was going to try hard not to move the team.

They even believed that the state and city lawmakers they elected knew the value that a professional sports team brought to a city, and not just in a purely financial sense.

Now, the powers that be think the fans can be duped again.

Key Arena is apparently unfit for the NBA. It’s a Muggsy Bogues in a world of Manute Bols. Funny thing, because if you search ‘David Stern Key Arena’ on Youtube, you hear something a little different from Stern on the night of Key Arena’s grand opening 13 years ago.

“It’s intimate, the sight-lines are great, the decorations are terrific,” Stern said of Key Arena. “I think Seattle should be very proud of what’s going on here tonight.”

How quickly things can change. Now there’s an ultimatum in place: build or no NBA.

Meanwhile, a decrepit Husky Stadium continues to crumble, bit-by-bit, because the team that plays there can’t threaten to run away.

And to address the issue of hijacking another team, two wrongs never make a right. As a city whose fans relegated the Sonics to a distant third in its pro-sports hierarchy, does Seattle even deserve another pro hoops team? Should it bail Stern’s league out for its expansion miscues?

Bottom line is if Seattle lands another NBA franchise, under the right conditions, that would be great news. But until the pain subsides, the uncertainty is gone, the hypocrisy lifted, all that’s left for this fan to do is to take a radical new stance: I’ll believe it when I see it.

Reach columnist Maks Goldenshteyn at sports@dailyuw.com.