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J.J. Adams: The NBA is expanding, and there is a long list of richer, better-suited cities well ahead of Vancouver in the pecking order.
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Published Jul 17, 2024 • Last updated 3 minutes ago • 5 minute read
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A moment in time that will never have an equivalent: Vancouver Grizzlies Eric Murdock battling Seattle SuperSonics guard Gary Payton in 1995. The Grizzlies left Vancouver in 2001; the Sonics departed Seattle in 2008. Now one of these cities will have an NBA team again soon. Hint: it ain’t Vancouver. Photo by Jon Murray /PNG
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It’s time for us to be honest with each other. It’s time for us to look at each other like David Beckham looks at Victoria, and admit something we knew but never wanted to say: The NBA dream in Vancouver is dead.
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The Vancouver Grizzlies are fated to be a wiki entry, to enter the halls of ‘Ballhalla’ where the Indianapolis Olympians, Providence Steamrollers, Anderson Packers, Sheboygan Red Skins and the rest of the defunct NBA teams reside as forgotten trivia entries. Sure, the Grizz won’t ever fade from memory here, not with the timeless logo and colour scheme, and legions of Mount Pleasant hipsters eager to wear it. But there won’t be another NBA team.
Let’s start with the facts. There is an extremely short list of any singular local individual or family with the deep pockets needed to buy an NBA team. The baseline fee to buy an expansion team, thanks to the new media rights deal that appears to be coming down the pipe, is around US$4 billion.
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The average NBA contract is US$10 million per year, with a team salary cap of US$140ish million for this season.
Not to mention they would need a place to play, and with the aging Rogers Arena occupied by the Vancouver Canucks, it would require a renovation and rental agreement with the Aquilini family or an entirely new stadium. A new stadium would come with a price tag of at least another $1 billion on construction, not including the land purchase.
For comparison’s sake, the least valuable NBA team — which just happens to be the refugees from Vancouver, the Memphis Grizzlies — are worth US$2.4 billion, according to Forbes’ 2023 valuations. That’s more than all but two NHL teams, New York (US$2.65 million) and Toronto (US$2.8 billion).
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The average NBA team is worth around US$3.85 billion, according to Forbes, and the NHL, US$1.33 billion. (The Canucks come in nearly average, at US$1.32 billion.)
Who in Vancouver could afford that?
Crypto guru Changpeng Zhao is worth close to US$15 billion, but he just began a fourth-month jail sentence for money laundering, which is not the kind of attention the NBA is seeking.
The legendary Jimmy Pattison and White Claw king Anthony Von Mandl both have net worths around $7 billion, and there is also the stunningly wealthy Thomson family and Shopify founder Tobi Lutke. But no Joseph Tsai to the rescue, as the billionaire already owns an NBA team (Brooklyn), and league rules forbid owning parts of two. This ain’t the CFL, baby.
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Knowing a prospective NBA team would need the old-money Avengers to assemble, Vancity Original brand owner Jeff Martin kicked off the VanBack campaign last year; basically a “hey, do you know any billionaires?” website where virtual jerseys for $200 million were for sale. Regular old people could “customize” their own jerseys and share on social media too.
The campaign was slick, professional, got a ton of interest and then fell flatter than Dapper Labs’ lawsuit-rife NBA NFTs. At last count, 478 people and zero billionaires had signed on.
So there’s money issues.
There’s also the issue that Vancouver is so far down the list of potential cities that a metropolis that might not have running water by 2025 is ahead of them on the list.
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If the NBA was going to return to Canada, it would land in La belle province first. The proximity and culture clash between Toronto and Montreal is a ready-made rivalry, not to mention that Quebec has produced a rash of NBA talent, while it’s been crickets in Vancouver since Kelly Olynyk made the league.
And give an NBA player a choice between a road game in Montreal or Vancouver, and it’s Crescent Street and poutine in a landslide.
But, my basketball Posh Spices, fret not. Your salvation is coming, and it’s just down the I-5.
The NBA is in the homestretch of closing its new broadcast rights deal — worth a whopping US$76 billion over 11 years — with Amazon, ESPN and NBC. When that’s finally settled, the league can focus on the long-awaited and much-discussed expansion.
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It’s no secret the NBA wants to add two more cities in the near future. And in an interview with NBC Sports last month, NBA commissioner Adam Silver gave the short list of prospective cities, and the Emerald gem to our south was one of them.
“There’s been some discussion about going back to Seattle, potentially. Las Vegas, no doubt, is very interested in a team. Mexico City one day,” he said. “But there’s lots of other U.S. cities and Canadian cities, frankly, that have reached out to us to tell us they’d be interested.”
Seattle is the only city with a ready-to-roost home. Climate Pledge Arena was renovated to modern standards just three years ago, and the city — much like Vancouver — is still stinging over the unjustified departure of its NBA team.
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When the Seattle Kraken started taking season ticket deposits in 2018, they hit 10,000 in 12 minutes. Just over an hour later, they had hit 75,000. Many of them were attracted by the understanding that, as Kraken ticket holders, they would have the inside track at packages for the NBA team when — not if — it was to return.
Indeed, the financial rearrangements of the Bonderman family, the Kraken majority owners, has begun. David Bonderman is part of the Boston Basketball Partners LLC, the group that owns the Boston Celtics, and has put the current league champions on the market. There are multiple reasons, including estate planning for some of the older ownership members, but NBA bylaws also prohibit owning more than one team.
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Bonderman is co-owner of the Kraken with daughter Samantha Holloway, and the team just announced a parent company that would ostensibly include the SuperSonics under its brand.
Canadians already flock south for Mariners and Seahawks games, and the chance to watch NBA basketball again will lure even more.
So basketball is inevitably going to return to the Pacific Northwest, just not in Vancouver.
The Grizzlies are dead. Long live the Grizzlies.
Now let’s see if my retro Shawn Kemp SuperSonics jersey will still fit.
jadams@postmedia.com
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Courtesy : https://theprovince.com/sports/a-grizzlies-redux-hardly-vancouvers-nba-dream-is-dead