Mike Bibby, Shareef Abdur-Rahim, Antonio Daniels, Greg Anthony, “Big Country” Bryant Reeves. The Vancouver Grizzlies had some players back in the day.
If not for the 1998 lockout and a weak Canadian dollar at the time, the gone-but-not forgotten other Canadian NBA franchise could’ve also been enjoying some of the same success that its Naismith Cup rival is now enjoying.
For the fifth straight year, the Toronto Raptors are holding their training camp in British Columbia. The Raptors are then beginning their exhibition schedule Saturday in Rogers Arena, the building formerly known as General Motors Place where the Grizzlies played all six of their seasons while in Vancouver.
It’s always a somewhat bittersweet reminder of what could’ve been for Canadian hoops heads on the West Coast with players and coaches constantly talking about how cool a city Vancouver is, the warm reception they always receive from the fans and how nice it always is to be back in B.C.
For Raptors guard Norman Powell, however, it sounds like he wouldn’t mind making the trip to Vancouver at least one more time a year.
“I really think they should bring an NBA team back here,” Powell told Rob Williams of The Daily Hive Vancouver after practice Tuesday.
Powell prefaced this remark by saying, “the fans here are just as adamant as they are in Toronto. Sold out crowd, they’re really into it.”
And chances are Vancouver basketball fans are really into what Powell is saying.
Still, it’s not like Powell is spewing falsities. The last three trips the Raptors have played at Rogers Arena, from 2014-16, they managed to hover right around that 19,000 attendance mark, which is a sell-out for Vancouver Canucks games.
Whether the NBA actually decides to experiment with the Vancouver market is another story altogether, particularly with Seattle hoping to get the Supersonics back, but it’s a nice gesture from Powell, regardless.
There were a lot of extenuating circumstances that forced the Grizzlies out of Vancouver. Taking another run with a Vancouver NBA team might not be the worst idea for the league, particularly with the Canada’s much further developed appetite for basketball.
Surely, Powell can’t be the only guy who’d like to compete for the Naismith Cup again.
[relatedlinks]
