There’s nothing in the manual for this.

The NBA has all kinds of procedures and advice for teams to follow on nearly every aspect of running a franchise, from game operations and in-game security to ticket sales and contracts. But you won’t find an entry under “What if a hurricane ravages our home city?”

That’s the predicament the New Orleans Hornets find themselves in after Hurricane Katrina’s destruction. New Orleans won’t be in a position to host a basketball game for several months, or possibly all season. Even if the restoration of services in the city goes faster than expected, there’s the little matter of whether anybody would be around to watch. New Orleans’s fan base is now scattered across the Southeast, and many of the evacuees are leaving for good.

Oddly enough, the Hornets’ home arena survived the ordeal with hardly a scratch. It was an odd juxtaposition to see on TV – cameras panned over the Superdome’s scarred and punctured roof, which became one of the enduring symbols of the hurricane, but right next to it New Orleans Arena looked as shiny and new as ever. Some of the interior suffered water damage, but the arena could be playable in a matter of months.

Unfortunately, the season will be well underway by then, so the Hornets’ most immediate concern is where to play their games this year. NBA expansion hopefuls like Las Vegas, Kansas City, and Oklahoma City have already offered their arenas, but considering the short time frame, the Hornets are expected to stay closer to home. That would be the league’s preference as well – moving the team 2,000 miles west to Vegas, for instance, would wreak havoc on teams’ travel schedules.

The Hornets have a few viable instate options – college arenas at LSU, University of Louisiana, and Louisiana Tech. LSU’s arena would be the first choice, as it is in the largest and closest city to New Orleans, Baton Rouge. Conveniently, a huge chunk of New Orleans’s population evacuated there (the city has reportedly doubled in size in the past two weeks), keeping the Hornets close to their small band of ticket holders. The most likely outcome is that the Hornets play the majority of their games there but move some others due to scheduling conflicts – most likely to the Cajundome on the University of Louisiana campus in Lafayette, roughly a three hour drive west of New Orleans.

This isn’t etched in stone, however, due to other logistical problems. Most prominently, Baton Rouge is the center of hurricane relief efforts and isn’t exactly awash in spare hotel rooms at the moment. Additionally, the college arenas can’t hold as many fans as New Orleans Arena. Of course, the latter probably won’t be a major problem because the Hornets were drawing so badly to begin with.

This, of course, raises the specter of a much larger question – will the Hornets ever return to New Orleans? Speculation has already begun about the city’s other pro team, the Saints, moving to San Antonio. Owner Tom Benson has also reportedly been interested in relocating the team to Los Angeles.

But the Saints are actually on better footing than the Hornets. They were a long-term fixture in the city rather than Johnny-come-latelies like the Hornets. Plus, football has always been a much easier sell in that part of the country.

At first glance, it seems horribly callous for a New Orleans sports team to depart in the wake of last week’s tragedy – haven’t these people suffered enough? A pro team of any kind, even one as bad as the Hornets, can provide a rallying point for the community and an outlet for many thousands of people to forget about their troubles for a while.

Yet it still may be the best thing for all concerned, because it would cost Louisiana far more to keep the Hornets than it would to let them leave. One of the reasons the team came to New Orleans from Charlotte was the largesse bestowed on them by civic leaders, including promises of $7.5 million in public money for the team’s new practice facility.

For the government to spend that money, or any of the other subsidies earmarked for the Hornets under the sweetheart deal that brought them to the bayou, now seems like an outrageous slap in the collective face of Katrina’s victims. This money should be used to rebuild levees, houses, and hospitals, not to line owner George Shinn’s pockets. (The same applies to the Saints, by the way, who are being paid about $15 million a year to stay.)

There’s a reason the city had to shell out all this money to entice the Hornets: It isn’t a viable pro basketball city otherwise. New Orleans doesn’t stack up to other major league cities in a few important respects. First, its median income is well below the national average and doesn’t figure to increase any time soon. Second, it’s the nation’s 40th largest TV market (and even lower if we include Canada). Finally, the NBA depends heavily on corporate ticket sales in most of its markets, but New Orleans is a tourist-driven economy with almost no large corporations to speak of (it has but one Fortune 500 firm).

Not surprisingly, the Hornets ranked last in the NBA in attendance in just their second season in the city, and that number only figures to worsen as the novelty factor wears off.

That’s why many considered the Hornets a strong relocation possibility even before Katrina came ashore. And if circumstances dictate a move, the Hornets won’t lack for suitors. Three years ago, Shinn was choosing among second-tier hopefuls like New Orleans and Louisville, but this time he’ll have at least two very solid candidates. Foremost is Las Vegas. The NBA is starting to relax its gambling concerns and cozy up to Sin City, and it certainly has dawned on nearly everyone that a pro team there could do very well.

And don’t count out Kansas City, which built a glitzy new arena, the Sprint Center, for the express purpose of wooing an NBA or NHL team to the plains.

The Hornets are too busy evaluating what they’re doing next month to figure out where they’ll be next year or the year after. What seems clear, however, is that in the long term there’s no way they can stay. It seems unconscionable for the Hornets and Saints to continue collecting money from Louisiana’s coffers after what the state has gone through, and it seems impossible for the teams to make money in the city without those subsidies.

While on the surface it may seem to add insult to injury, the cold calculus says that letting the Hornets and Saints move on makes the Herculean task of rebuilding the Big Easy a bit less onerous. After what happened last week, that should be the only priority.

Mr. Hollinger is the author of the 2005–06 Pro Basketball Forecast.