I figured that we may as well get to the unpleasant-ness sooner rather than later. This video by Andy Hoops looks at Vancouver lost their team, looking at these points:
- Vinsanity propelled the Raptors while the Grizzlies lacked a star on his level
- Low attendance during the last two years (after 4 seasons of being mid-pack despite having an bad team. Vancouver fans still showed up)
- Weak Canadian dollar at the time
- The NBA’s lack of promotion of basketball in Vancouver
- …Steve Francis…
He misses a few key points–such as the NBA purposely hamstringing the Raptors and Grizzlies in the draft by preventing them from getting the first pick, and limiting their salary cap the first two years–but what really strikes me about this video is the fact that it has over 320,000 views.
Are you seeing this, NBA? A guy with just over 300,000 subscribers has over 320,000 views on a video about the Grizzlies leaving. Why?
Because people keep searching for answers about something which upsets them. They’re still passionate. We want an NBA team in Vancouver.
I had the pleasure of talking to Andy of Andy Hoops recently, and I asked him what he thought about Vancouver losing their team and the NBA returning to Vancouver:
“I think right now is the perfect time for Vancouver to have a team. The city has grown a lot in the last few years and basketball interest in the area is at an all-time high.” From: NBAtoVancouver.com
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I nodded my head with a big HELL YES, and he continued:
“It wasn’t like 20 years ago when the NBA was still in the baby stages of expanding into Canada. Nowadays, Canadians love basketball and they’d love to have another team to root for. It could create a new BC vs. Ontario rivalry for basketball, and that’s going to help the sport’s popularity even more. “
Andy is my kind of guy, and I agree completely with him on everything except the BC/Ontario rivalry. As someone who has lived in both ONT and BC for many years, BC thinks they have a rivalry with ONT while ONT doesn’t think about BC. What we need is that I5 rivalry with Portland and Seattle back! Cascadia rumble!!!!!
Andy has a great YouTube channel all about basketball that you should watch and subscribe to. Some of his videos break 10 million views, it’s really quality stuff.
NBA to Vancouver 