Decline has consequences.

One of them is more decline.

Yesterday, Ted Leonsis, owner of the Washington Wizards (NBA) and the Washington Capitals (NHL), announced that he has reached a non-binding agreement under which both teams would move to Alexandria, Virginia. Gov. Glenn Youngkin appeared with Leonsis to tout the relocation, for which the Commonwealth will make a major financial commitment.

The original owner of the two teams, Abe Pollin, moved them from Maryland to D.C.’s Chinatown neighborhood in 1997. The move transformed a deteriorating, crime-ridden part of town. New restaurants and bars flourished. The area became what Barry Svrluga of the Washington Post calls “a neighborhood that used to pulse with life even when the Caps and Wizards weren’t home.” (Emphasis added)

But the key words in the Svrluga quotation are the ones I emphasized — “used to.” The neighborhood surrounding the area has undergone a sharp decline in recent years. There’s an open-air drug market nearby. Homelessness is evident. Crime has spiked (as is the case throughout D.C.).

This decline isn’t the only reason why Leonsis approached Virginia about taking his teams there. But it likely played a significant role. As Svrluga puts it, the equation is more complex than, “‘The District’s going downhill, so the teams had to leave’, but damned if it doesn’t feel that way.”

It feels that way for good reason.

Left-liberals writing about Leonsis’ planned move blame the pandemic for the decline of the Chinatown area. During the pandemic, a great many workers who live outside of D.C. but whose jobs are in the city, started working remotely. After the pandemic, the federal government was extremely lenient in permitting its employees to continue working from home. As a result, there are many fewer people in the city when the workday ends.

But people have always travelled far from where they work to attend sporting events and, if possible, to have a meal before or afterwards. They used to schlep in large numbers to the old Capital Centre in the wilds of Prince George’s, County, Maryland — hardly an area full of workers with lots of disposable income — to see the basketball and hockey teams.

Virginia expects, reasonably, that Caps and Wizards fans will schlep to Alexandria, even though they work and live elsewhere. And it expects, reasonably, that these fans will spend money on food and other entertainment in the area. In fact, the plan that Leonsis and Youngkin touted contemplates large scale development of that area, including a fan plaza, restaurants, offices and stores.

Build it, and normally they will come.

But people won’t come at night to an area riddled by homelessness, open drug use, and crime. Just yesterday night, I passed on a big high school basketball game between two great D.C. rivals — a matchup I’ve attended for years except during the pandemic — because it was played in a sketchy neighborhood.

Live basketball is great fun to watch. But watching live basketball isn’t worth being mugged or carjacked.

In my view, then, the key 2020 event in the decline of Chinatown wasn’t so much the pandemic as the death of George Floyd and the absurd reaction to it. In D.C., the “defund the police movement” amounted to a green light for the criminals who are keeping law-abiding folks off the street at night.

Thus, the blame for Chinatown’s decline lies with the D.C. City Council, the Biden-appointed federal prosecutor, and to a lesser extent the mayor for their notoriously soft-on-crime policies and practices. Blaming the pandemic is largely an evasion.

If Leonsis ends up moving his two teams, as now seems almost certain, the Chinatown neighborhood will continue to descend — perhaps to a state as bad as that which prevailed before the arena was built. Yes, Georgetown will probably keep playing its home basketball games (not much of an attraction these days) at the arena. There will be some concerts, horse shows, and the occasional monster truck extravaganza, as well.

But all of this won’t come close to making up for the dates vacated by the Caps and Wizards.

Some of the commentary about the move seems to assume that D.C. — the nation’s capital, after all — is entitled to host sports teams, or at least an NBA team given the city’s great affinity for basketball. Think again.

The basketball and hockey teams spent two decades in Maryland before moving to D.C. The football team has played its games in Maryland for more than 25 years. The entire D.C. area was without baseball for 35 long years.

Like every other jurisdiction in America, Washington, D.C. must compete to attract and retain businesses and taxpayers. Sure, D.C. has an enormous permanent industry — the federal government — but that’s not enough. Moreover, D.C. must even compete to keep some federal agencies from heading to the suburbs.

Every year is an audition. Washington, D.C., like so many other jurisdictions run by left-liberals (including neighboring Maryland), is failing its auditions. It is declining rapidly. And, as we can see from what’s almost certain to happen in Chinatown, the consequence of that decline will be more decline.