Back in the day, I went to a few Vancouver Grizzlies games. I had (and have) very little interest in basketball, so I only attended when people gave me tickets.
Regardless, afer 6 years of lousy performances and declining support, the team was shipped off to Memphis, Tennessee. I find it amusing that the team is still called the Memphis Grizzlies, despite there being no bears around for thousands of miles.
Despite the Bears of the South, an ownership group is keen to bring NBA basketball back to the city:
Kelsey says the group is putting an official proposal together in hopes of securing a team–possibly the Portland Trailblazers.
Trailblazers are reportedly in financial trouble. Team owner Paul Allen recently made the Trailblazers’ finances public. He says the team will lose $100 million over the next three years
Being uninterested in basketball, I’m pretty ambivalent about this idea. Of course, it will mean worse ice conditions at Canucks games, but that’s hardly reason enough to oppose it.
DarrenBarefoot.com 
Darren: I don’t live there but I’m sure there are a lot of “Grizzlies” fans who were devasted in losing their team to Memphis. I don’t know how North Americans accept that the team that they might absolutely adore and support, can at an owners whim, be shipped off to another city.
How would feel if your beloved Canucks were shipped off to Montreal? Would you quickly get over it and hope tht another team replaces them.
Hey Darren – a group with an official proposal is one thing, but I seriously doubt the NBA will be willing to try again in Vancouver so soon after the failure of the Grizzlies, and in light of the continuing suck-itude of the Toronto Raptors. The needed revenue obviously was not here, the players simply didn’t want to play in Canada (more fool them, but oh well) and I expect there are many American cities who are lined up for a franchise, all more attractive to a pro league than Vancouver.
Who cares, seeing as when everybody gets healthy, the Canucks now have the best defence in the league and are going to the Cup! Well, may make the playoffs, anyway…
I don’t think many were devastated. When the Grizzlies arrived (incidentally, the proper singular for an individual player was apparently “Grizzlie,” which annoyed the hell out of me as an editor), the general reaction in Vancouver seemed to be, “huh?”
The team seemed mostly a way for the Griffiths family to justify building the GM Place arena, which they eventually lost control of, and then the team left anyway. It never really caught the imagination of the city or the province — certainly not the way the Canucks do. And the Grizzlies never seemed able to justify their massive cost in salaries when people felt more inspired by the massively cheaper BC Lions football team.
Vancouver is not much of a basketball town, it seems. Nothing ever came of the pre-1983 talk of a pro baseball team for our then-new domed stadium either. As someone who cares little for pro sports, that’s fine by me. Having the Canucks for the rabid sports types, plus second-tier hockey, baseball, and soccer teams, seems to be enough — especially when so many Vancouverites would rather be out Grouse Grinding or sailing or skiing or whatever in their own athletic activities.
In summary: no, we don’t need another wacky scheme to blow a bunch of money on a basketball team. I don’t think we should measure the worth of our city by the number-of-pro-teams criterion.
Oh, and there’s some sort of big winter competition coming here in 2010, I hear. That might keep sports types occupied, methinks.
It would be interesting to see if the NBA would consider it. For myself, I doubt that they would because I don’t think they really care too much about Canada at all. Including the Raptors.
But, stranger things have happened. They have replaced teams that have moved to another market more often than the other sports leagues – the Minnesota Lakers moved to LA to replaced by the T’wolves; the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah; the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans and were replaced by the Charlotte Bobcats, etc.
So who knows what they would do…
It would be interesting to see if the NBA would consider it. For myself, I doubt that they would because I don’t think they really care too much about Canada at all. Including the Raptors.
But, stranger things have happened. They have replaced teams that have moved to another market more often than the other sports leagues – the Minnesota Lakers moved to LA to replaced by the T’wolves; the New Orleans Jazz moved to Utah; the Charlotte Hornets moved to New Orleans and were replaced by the Charlotte Bobcats, etc.
So who knows what they would do…
I share your bemusement about the lack of bears in Memphis. I blogged about this a long time ago, when the Grizzlies finally got a new logo. Three years to come up with it. Three years!
Never seen any grizzlies in Vancouver either myself, perhaps they’d be a better fit in Anchorage…
Alas screw, basketball.. we got world class soccer coming to town..
Besides, we got better things to do in the Winter than watch two pro sports.
I was disappointed when the Grizzlies left Vancouver. it would be great if another team could call Vancouver home. You need to make a concerted effort to at least go to a game once or twice a year…. It will help the team and the more money they have the better the players they can get.
I would love to see another basketball team in Vancouver although I think they’ve got to change the rules around time-outs.
Perhaps the team could be called the Vancouver Kermodeis?
rumour has it, Bill Gates is buying the trailblazers and moving them to Vancouver, but owners of the Canucks have made a pitch. Apparentley Gates would also buy the PNE Coliseum.
There are some seriously ignorant comments here. If you think that the rest of vancouver thinks like yourselves or even the rest of canada, you are sorely wrong. I miss the grizz and I would want a team back in the NBA. The best player in the NBA is from BC, and it pisses me off that I would have to go to toronto to watch him. The canucks will always be the canucks, but to say there are no Basketball fans in BC or very few is dead wrong. The NBA never did bad here, and we outdrew what the grizzlies are drawing in memphis for a GOOD team. The reason the team left is because the new owner (heisley) didn’t own GM place, was a jack off that was so dead set on moving the team, and now he is suffering big time. Im not a soccer fan, a lacrosse fan, or even a football fan. I am just a hockey fan and a basketball fan, but not so much because we don’t have a team. If we do get another team I’ll support it and I am sure many people would.
Vancouver Trail Blazers? doesn’t sound that bad. As far as I’m concerned, having an NBA team here in Vancouver would complete the city as a global hub of sports like a royal flush. It would really pretty much put Vancouver in the world map. Some hardliner farts here would say ‘Hey, we’re contented of having the Canucks and the Lions! My response would be, go to any tropical country out there – mexico, india or indonesia and ask the people there: ‘Hey do you know the Canucks?’ they would say NO with a what the hell? look. Now, these farts would feel that Vancouver is exclusively for hockey. But they are ignorantly shutting their eyes to a future full of possibilities. Having city that ‘shines’ which is full of sports teams would indirectly attract more foreign investments as investors would see this city as the ‘PLACE TO BE IN.’ Hell, Vancouver is already voted as the ‘world’s most livable city’ by the Economist Magazine. I’m not sure about this but, right now, there are no league restrictions like before that so happened to kill the Grizzlies here in Vancouver. Do you know that if there aren’t any restrictions Tim Duncan is supposed to be drafted with the Grizzlies? WHAT? (lil jon =p). Now you decide. 2010+hockey+’football canada’+blazers=not bad biatch… Why try to fit in when we’re born to stand out?
I would love to have the NBA back. The ONLY reason the CFL is popular here is because it is the only thing around. The CFL blows, do not even feed me or anyone else the image that people would like the CFL, Lacross or whatever you are planning to say over the NBA. We drew well here for the NBA and now with all that is going on in this town I would welcome them back.
Send the Canucks packing! Lets get a baseball team in Vancouver.
I would love to see the NBA back in Vancouver. I wouldn’t mind seeing a major baseball team here either.
That would be exciting if the NBA comes back but we need a star like Nash, also MLB in Vancouver onver the ocean with the ball going into the water, We’re the next expansion MLB city (Vancouver).
It would really spruce up the economy if Vancouver aquired an NBA team, especailly if they were successful, unlike the Grizzlies. I would definitely go to their games and I think that if they were good, most of the games would be sold out. For example, look at the Canucks, they did not even make the playoffs, and all their regular season games were sold out. That would spell out good future to Vancouvers future NBA team. Vancouver would most likely get the Trail Blazers, and they have potential to being a successful nba team. I certaily hope Vancouver recieves an NBA team because Vancouver is not only a hockey city, it is a basketball one too!!
Well Darren I think you are mistaken, as you can see with the responses, alot of people would like the NBA back in Vancouver, and I am one of them!!! I am a huge basketball and hockey fan and this city is diverse enough to have both pro teams! The Grizzlies should have never left Vancouver to begin with!!! I would definitely be another one lining up to support a local team. We have alot more to offer the NBA and the world then Memphis does that is for sure!!!!
i heard that the vancouver cancucks owners gave the nba an offer for the trailblazers but the nba has rejected it. So tooo bad
GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO GO VANCOUVER GO
anybody have an update on a franchise coming here
i am a huge basketball fan and would love for an nba team to come back to vancouver…but, i have to ask…do you think david stern hates or has something against vancouver or do you think he’d happily put another team here?
When the Grizz were in the city, they were my #1 team. Did they, as several comments have asserted, suck? Well, yeah! The NBA set things up exactly so they would suck – they had been burned by Orlando’s instant success and eschewed a repeat.
A couple of other points to note:
a.) even though the team was leaving, that average attendance for that final year was in the 17,000 range – better than over half of the cities in the league;
b.) the Canadian dollar was worth 65 cents US at the time and now the loonie is worth 87 cents – a huge difference in the bottom line;
c.) an unknowledgeable absentee owner, whose main interest was in flipping the franchise (and, by the way, turned about $100 mil profit);
d.) a management team that was, frankly, the most incompetent acting group of boobs anyone could imagine. (In their defence, they were rather pleasant.)
If anyone thinks that the NBA would not do well in Vancouver, and that an expansion MLB team could not develop a big enough market in a city this size, just remember that Vancouver is larger than many of the two, three and even several four franchise cities in the US.
(e.g. Pittsburg, Denver, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Charlotte, New Orleans, and is moving up on Tampa Bay, San Diego, Baltimore – and likely one or two I forgot.)
Would the NBA return? Why not? Like all leagues, they go where the money is. Right now, in Canada, Vancouver, Calgary and Ottawa are emmbarrasingly flush with cash. In the US, I think only San Jose comes close.
As for the dolt that said there is no basketball tradition in Vancouver … HUH? We’ve had basketball for over 80 years. The AAA High School tourney, the various University teams – with both men and womens teams often winning the National championship and, for years, both UBC and SFU played in the tier 1 NAIA.
Baseball goes back here to the 1900’s. When we had the AAA Mounties, they led the AAA leagues in attendance (the AAA Canadians didn’t do as well in attendance, but they weren’t playing Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco or San Diego). I have no doubt that MLB would routinely play to 2.5 million fans (if they had a really proper state of the art stadium – not BC Place).
As for franchises not being available, it just isn’t true.
Baseball has many unhealthy franchises, as does the NBA, the NFL and the NHL.
Just in the NFL, the Saints won’t commit to staying in NO after 2010 and the Rams are not likely to stay put if things don’t look up in StL pretty quick.
The NBA is having problems in Portland, Seattle, Milwaukee, Charlotte, NO, Orlando (in spite of Disney involvement) and, no doubt, other cities.
The Washington Nationals are not exactly burning up the turnstiles nor do they have much of a radio/TV net. Ditto the Pirates, the D-Rays, the A’s, even the Giants.
As for the NHL, well they’re trying to establish a brand and a game in a whole foreign region of the US. Most of the southern cities are in some difficulty. In general, that will pass, given a few more years. The NHL knew it was going to have to be a ‘long haul’ situation i the South. So far, they seem to be OK in Nashville, Dallas, Atlanta and T Bay. I don’t know how they are in Miami (Florida). North Carolina is in some trouble, I think. (But Baltimore, KC, Portland, Milwaukee are in the wings and hungry.)
Anyway, my much belabored point is: we do not HAVE to repeat the Expansion route; there are existing franchises to be had and I think Vancouver would do well by any and all of the games.
Will the Super Sonic’s relocate to Vancouver? All the articles i’m reading are saying that they might be moving to Vegas.
I would love for a another basketball team in Vancouver because even though they lost a lot games they tried to win. Also i have been to several Vancouver Grizzlies and i had a good time at the games. PLEASE ANYONE LET ME KNOW IF ANOTHER BASKETBALL TEAM COMES TO VANCOUVER! NOW I LIVE IN TORONTO SO I CHEER FOR TORONTO RAPTORS! BUT I WOULD SUPPORT VANCOUVER DEFINITELY IF IT HAD ANOTHER BASKETBALL TEAM!
I would love to teams in Vancouver Montreal and Calgary and Winnipeg and Quebec City For Basketball and Edmonton. 7 Basketball Teams And Hockey. ALso i would want a Quebec team in hockey to Quebec City i mean and a hockey team in Winnipeg. That would make me happy.
tall me if the vancouver will be getting a basketball team(and when they are) because i live in vancouver and i love basketball.
FRIDAY NIGHT = SUNS and Supersonics at GM PLACE…its sold out…that shows that people are interested in NBA Basketball in Vancouver
the NBA was made for Vancouver. The blazers would be perfect!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey We need a basketball team because basketball was invented in Canada bur we only have one basketball team that’s sad
WE NEED A NBA TEAM. PERIOD. THE BLAZERS IN VANCITY!! I’d be a season ticket holder.
I agree, I think that Vancouver should be given a second chance for NBA basketball. Perhaps the circumstances are better now that the Sonics are gone, this might leave a larger fan base for the Vancouver team.