NBA Champion Danny Green was in Vancouver not too long ago giving Raptors fans a chance to meet a member of the NBA Championship winning Toronto Raptors. Fans lined up for hours to see the star, with many either wearing Vancouver Grizzlies gear or Toronto Raptors gear.
Danny was asked about all the Grizzlies jerseys he saw and if Vancouver should have a team:
“I do. I do believe so. Vancouver is a wonderful city that’s really nice. A great fan base. Probably better than some other cities than we have in the states.” Danny Green
Danny was on a tour with his kids basketball camp. This program helps kids learn valuable skills through basketball. There is no doubt that an NBA team would bring this to Vancouver, giving back directly to the community.
The NBA is bring an art gallery of iconic images taken by Andrew D. Bernstein, a NBA photographer who has taken photos that you know. You can find it at NBAGallery.ca.
The NBA Gallery is coming to VANCOUVER! 🇨🇦 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ▪️October 17th – 20th ▪️Free, all ages event!
Tickets are free. Those of us at NBAtoVancouver.com are encouraging all who attend to WEAR GRIZZLIES GEAR. The NBA is here and we need to let them know that we never stopped loving basketball. We want our team back. Showing up in your Bape hoodie isn’t going to do that.
Wear your Grizz. Support the NBA’s return to Vancouver. Watch this site as we may be running a mock strike outside the gallery decked out in all Grizz gear with ‘protest signs’ and some chants!
The NBA Gallery is coming to VANCOUVER! 🇨🇦 ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ▪️October 17th – 20th ▪️Free, all ages event!
The NBA is coming to Vancouver, and Vancouver is going to let it be known that we want an NBA team back. A rally will be held before the Clippers/Mavericks game on October 17 2019. Fans are encouraged to wear their best Grizzlies gear for a shot at prizes and glory. Glory? Read on…
First, save this image and share it everywhere you can.
GRIZZLIES fans! Come decked out in your Grizz gear with signs and white rally towels for Vancouver’s first #NBAtoYVR RALLY. Let’s #BringBackTheGrizz and show the NBA how much we want a team back! Oct. 17th at 4:30pm (before the exhibition game) @ Nielsen Statue at Rogers Arena pic.twitter.com/fcLnv9W5kM
This will be step one of an ongoing collaboration between these people, and a few others, that will bring the NBA back to Vancouver.
We need you to start making noise with us, and sustain it, if we want this to happen. This is the first step. Take it with us.
Already going to the game? Get there early for…
…fabulous prizes! There will be giveaways of shirts and stickers for early fans in Grizzlies gear. There’s also a shot at lasting fame…but you’re going to have to show up and see what that is. 😉
Vancouver entering the NBA once more can, and should, happen. The fan support here, year after year during the NBA Canada Series clearly shows this. Remember last year?
Another sellout at Rogers Arena in Vancouver for the NBA. Tons of Grizzlies jerseys, hats and shirts in the crowd. Imagine if that franchise had only been given a fighting chance. pic.twitter.com/nO0xqzikK6
Those words, from the mouth of my man Matty D, rang true to the ears of this life-long basketball fan from Ontario. Living in Vancouver though, I could only think of one thing sweeter: “Vancouver! The NBA title is YOURS!”
The Raptors win has lead to lots of speculation on the NBA returning to Vancouver after the explosion of fan support across the country. I saw the party on Granville street after the Raptors win, and this in a city which usually turns its nose up to ANYTHING the people of Toronto achieve.
The video has some very encouraging and revealing quotes:
“We need the Grizzlies to come back. We need a basketball team here. That’s what we need.” Guy celebrating the Raps win, first comment is still we need a team in Vancouver
“I’m convinced that it could come back. It’s just a matter of timing.” Arthur Griffiths, former Grizzlies owner
“There’s just no doubt in my mind that we’d be one of those stories in sport where I think we’d go years and years and years without an empty seat.”Arthur Griffiths
Fans want the team back, a former owner knows we’d be a success, and even the commissioner of the league openly states that there should be a team here and regrets that there isn’t.
This will only change with your voice, your effort, and your time. Sign up for email updates below and start pushing along with the rest of us here at NBAtoVancouver.com!
Another moment in “ah dammit” Vancouver sports history. This is the original live broadcast on TSN, interupting a spirited ladies tennis match, where we see Stan McCammon (remember him? The guy who blew the Gretzky to Canucks deal) start out with the following lies:
How this is a big day for sports fans in Vancouver
That this is a big day for Vancouver Grizzlies basketball fans
How this will bring more stability for Vancouver Grizzlies fans and make the team more successful
That the future looks brighter for the team
That Vancouver is going to feel good about the new ownership
Jim Buss is ruining the Lakers just like Stan McCammon ruined the Canucks for years.
Bang on work there Stan, oh and Vancouver did fine without Gretzky…right? All those Stanley Cup wins…
Then, good lord and then, Michael Heisley gets in one good joke (about wearing the most expensive leather jacket in Canada) before getting to the real jokes:
He affirms his commitment to the Vancouver Grizzlies, their fans, and the city of Vancouver. The city that no longer has an NBA team
He intends to do everything in his power to make the Grizzlies a success in Vancouver. The team which then quickly moved to Memphis
He states that he’s committed to this market. Apparently a commitment meant a year to him
He commits to building a winning team. A team which then lost more games than any other franchise
Michael Heisley told many lies during his first presser, but got one thing right: this is the greatest game, the greatest sport in the world. Then he lied his face off.
Another point he made I agree with is this: There’s a bright future for pro basketball in Vancouver. There is. It starts now with you joining in and taking part.
Side note: Jim van Horne’s mustache game back then is unequaled by anyone in modern media. What a magnificent example of dad-like facial hair.
Here’s a glorious video of Big Country doing what he was supposed to do until the injury with a stat line of 31pts/12rebs/4asts versus the Seattle Supersonics. Not a bad stat line, Big C!
In this video you’ll see Bryant:
In top goatee form
Go 8 for 8 in the first quarter for 17 points
Score 25 points by the first half
Hit from the elbow off a sweet pick and roll
Get up fast on a rebound from a Bibby miss and lay it up with power
Sky hook like Kareem
Dish the ball when he’s double teamed to Harrington for layups twice
Hit a nasty turnaround jumper from 15 feet out
Grab a rebound out of the air and put it back up before hitting the ground
This was one of his finest games for the Grizzlies, and you can hear Vancouver’s fans cheer him on with glee. Vancouver always loved the NBA, it would be everything to cheer again.
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
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.
Reef was one of, if not the, best men to wear the teal. Watch this video to see him school Shaq with a high-bank off the glass, dunk hard on Marburry, make deft passes, and charge to the hoop like he’s the only one out there. Stick around and watch Big Country with one of the laziest nice assists you’ll see…
Clips include his time with the Grizzlies, Kings, and Hawks. You’ll see his athleticism, his ability to hit shots in the face of any defender, and the dunks that delighted basketball fans throughout the late 90s and early 00s.
Big shout out to Reef as the current NBA G League president. Get a word in with the @NBA president on a team coming back to Vancouver, Reef! @ShareefAbdur_R
I have recently had the pleasure of meeting and speaking with filmmaker Kat Jayme. She is the writer/director/star of “Finding Big Country”, now on Prime and a selection from the 2018 Vancouver Internal Film Festival. Here’s a taste:
Her movie on Bryant “Big Country” Reeves has inspired basketball fans all over the province of BC and beyond to stand up and say “Hey, I want the NBA back to Vancouver as well!” She’s the reason I bought this domain and got to work on what I do best…building websites.
Her work on this film has made her the defacto “Grizzlies Superfan,” right to the point of meeting the legend himself…Raptors Superfan Nav Bhatia!
This was filmed by NBA TV Canada. They heard Kat. They can hear us, all of us, if we unite. They know fans want a team in Vancouver. We all need to continue to be heard, continue to share our stories of the team, and one day I’ll see you all at the arena with a basketball jersey emblazoned with VANCOUVER across the chest.
To make that happen we need to:
Use #NBAVancouver when we post about anything basketball related on social media.
Share this website until it’s heard because it will tell your stories, our stories, about our love for the game.
Sign the petition below to put our names on what we want.
Subscribe to this site so that when something new goes up it is shared with the world.
This is VanCity B-ball Boy talking to you. I am one man putting his money where his heart is by buying and building this site. I can’t do this on my own the same as you can’t do this on your own, the same as Kat–Superfan that she is–can’t do this on her own, but we can all do this together.
My friends call me by another name, but you can call me VanCity B-ball Boy. I have been watching basketball since around 1988 when MJ23 set the whole world on fire and showed everyone what it meant to fly. What it meant to have a goal and drive towards it…that goal being the hoop and a nasty slam on everyone who tried to stop him.
Watching MJ23, Scottie, and the rest of the Bulls win a championship when they were my team was special…but not quite as special as it should have been. Not as special as when my local (I grew up in Ontario) Blue Jays won the World Series back-to-back and I literally jumped for joy. Something was missing. Something that would have me singing about it decades later.
That thing, of course, was that they weren’t really my team. They repped Chicago, a different city in a different country.
Then in 1995 the Raptors came.
Then this past year the Raptors became the NBA Champions.
I flew from my home in Vancouver to Toronto for the parade, tattooed the trophy and the Raptor on my leg, and spent over $3000 in total on the Raptors.
Basketball made my life worth living when I was a depressed child and couldn’t afford to play hockey but found friends on b-ball courts all over, and it really hit me deeply when my home team came into the league and I could watch them and say that they were mine.
I now want everyone in Vancouver–my adopted home I have spent 6 years in and came back to after travelling the world because I knew where my heart was and is–to feel that same elation I felt as Kyle Lowry rode by me holding the trophy on those big red buses and I screamed “SPICY P!” as hard as I could at Pascal Siakam and he turned to thump his chest and point at me in the crowd.
Vancouver deserves these moments with a sport that’s more accessible to the poor, more global and multi-cultural than most, and able to be played anywhere by anyone at any time.
Do your part by sharing this website on social media, and clicking the button below to add your name to the petition to bring the NBA to Vancouver.
The NBA deserves a city like Vancouver whose first four seasons all saw higher attendance averages than six teams this past season in today’s modern NBA of higher attendance and skyrocketing TV viewership.
NBA to Vancouver 