The NBA in Vancouver? Don’t count on it
Steve Bosch/Postmedia News
After the way things went for Bryant Reeves and the Grizzlies the first time around, fans probably won't be eager to welcome the NBA back any time soon.
Bruce Arthur February 17, 2011 – 9:02 pm
Stop it. Stop it right now. Don’t get excited, or curious, or get your hopes up. Of course, since this advice is centred around talk — foolish, kernel-of-nothing talk — of the NBA returning to Vancouver, and since Vancouver itself stopped caring about the NBA a long time ago, telling people not to get their hopes up is just redundancy.
The only reason this is a topic at all is that NBA commissioner David Stern, in a podcast conversation with espn.com’s Bill Simmons, started talked about cities that have expressed interest in an NBA team, should one have to be relocated.
“There are no choice of suitors who have contacted us who want to buy the [New Orleans Hornets] and take it somewhere else,” Stern said. “I think maybe or maybe not on my watch, when Seattle has plans for a new building, I think it’s a very prime city for an NBA franchise. We’ve been visited or contacted by three different groups that are putting up a building in Las Vegas.
“And we’ve had visits from Anaheim, we’ve had visits from, believe it or not, Vancouver, where the Canucks are absolutely doing a spectacular job there.”
Ah, yes, Vancouver. Six years of pitiable basketball, a stinking pile of what they called Naismith red, Pacific turquoise, bear bronze and black. There was more Naismith red than black on the balance sheets and on the court, where the Grizzlies went 101-359.
Francesco Aquilini, whose family owns the Canucks, met with Stern in January in New York regarding potential interest in the Hornets, which the NBA currently owns. According to both sides it was a polite get-to-know-you session in which Aquilini expressed potential interest, and was neither discouraged nor overly encouraged. It was good governance, on Stern’s part. You don’t turn away potential suitors. You try not to shut doors.
But this is going nowhere. The Aquilinis own Rogers Arena, and they have two essential ingredients here: a building that is full about 100 nights a year — “and it’s not like we’re missing out on many events,” says Canucks chief operating officer Victor de Bonis — and dreams of a sports empire. Bless them for that.
To his credit, de Bonis emphasizes that this is simply inquiry, and they are simply in the earliest stages of their due diligence. “If we were ever going to do anything like this,” he says, “it would have to make sense. Before you even start thinking about it, you have to figure out if it’s worth thinking about.”
But Vancouver is no more on the NBA agenda than Pittsburgh is. In discussing ready-made and empty arenas, Stern mentioned Kansas City, St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Anaheim, and Pittsburgh. Pittsburgh’s a great town, but do you think it can support four major professional sports? Do you think it’s on the NBA agenda? If so, then there’s an NHL franchise in Cleveland I’d like to sell you.
No, Stern was trying to convey — say, to the city council in Sacramento, where an arena battle is ongoing — that other towns are interested the NBA. And Vancouver’s name came up.
I’m not sure exactly how strong Vancouver’s corporate base really is, but according to John Winter, the president and CEO of the B.C. Chamber of Commerce, there are fewer corporate head offices in Vancouver now than there were 10 years ago. He points out that Vancouver is not a consumer-based economy, in terms of big companies; as a Pacific hub, Vancouver is primarily an export-based economy.
“If you’re Teck Cominco, having ads on the rink boards, it doesn’t sell iron ore,” Winter said.
Not only that, but adding a basketball team would take some money from the hockey team, since it’s all fishing in the same pond. Perhaps the Aquilinis could construct enough corporate synergies with the Canucks — shared sales, marketing, broadcast, and game operations staffing, plus bundled luxury suites and season-ticket packages — to reach an acceptable corporate threshold. Of anyone, they would best know the local market for such things. The Canadian dollar isn’t at 65 cents anymore, either.
But even if everything else were addressed, it would require public support. And that’s where it would fail.
“If the fan support isn’t there, it doesn’t matter on the corporate side,” de Bonis says. “Even in hockey — the building being full drives everything.”
I don’t think the fans would come back. Not for a long time. I think that when the Grizzlies left, basketball in Vancouver died. Steve Nash can own fitness clubs, and the diehards are still kicking around, but the damage has been done. My brother used to love the NBA; my father would drive us to Seattle to watch games before the Grizzlies came. We bought Grizzlies tickets. Neither of them watch much basketball anymore.
It is the same with dozens of my Vancouver friends. When Mike Halford and Jason Brough talk about the NBA on their radio show on Team 1040, they often get dead air, or lingering bitterness.
The NBA set Vancouver up to fail, aided and abetted its failure — pushing Stu Jackson to be general manager, failing to educate its players on living in Canada, barring Vancouver and Toronto from a No. 1 overall pick — and after barring Walmart heir-in-law Bill Laurie’s bid to move the team to St. Louis, approved carpetbagger Michael Heisley’s ownership bid. And off to Memphis they went. When the Sonics left Seattle, it was another blow. The NBA poisoned the well. People either remember the betrayal, or they chose to forget the NBA existed.
I’d be thrilled to be wrong on this. A new collective bargaining agreement could create a more feasible cost structure, sure — the league is aiming to reduce player compensation and increase league-wide parity, since a majority of owners feel left out of the Lakers/Celtics/Heat gold rush these days. Maybe that would lower the bar to Vancouver’s re-entry back into the NBA’s foreign orbit.
But two years ago, in another podcast on espn.com, Stern said, “I don’t think we can go back. I think that was a great city, and I think we just didn’t take advantage of the opportunity.”
He was right on all counts. Too bad.
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barthur@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @bruce_arthur