Tougher sell for NBA in Vancouver
Jilted by Grizzlies’ departure, sports fans have since embraced local teams and outdoor lifestyle
Pro basketball is back in Rogers Arena on Sunday. Diehard NBA fans will rejoice. For the rest of us, it’s more a sardonic case of “hoop de do.”
The Toronto Raptors, in their bid to engage everybody from Sooke to Gander with the ‘ We The North’ campaign and to have the league’s lone Canadian franchise seen as Canada’s team, have held part of their 2014-15 training camp in Vancouver this week.
Or, more specifically, they’ve trained in Burnaby at the new Fortius Sport and Health Centre.
And come Sunday, at the onetime home of their expansion cousins from 20 years ago, the lamentable and since-departed Vancouver Grizzlies, they’ll open their pre-season against the Sacramento Kings who, if you believe in relocation fairy tales, were close to becoming the Vancouver Kings in 2012 when a deal to move to Seattle fell apart.
It’s all a bit of a tease, a tug at your purse strings and a pull on your hoop heartstrings.
The Raptors, of course, want us to buy more DeRozan, Valanciunas and Lowry jerseys and to watch more Raptors TV.
The sanctioning NBA wants us to feel like the league hasn’t completely abandoned Vancouver and that former commissioner David Stern was sincere when he said that allowing the Grizzlies to leave in 2001 after just six seasons was a major regret.
And, that if we continue to show that we’ve gotten over being taken by Chicago-based business flipper Michael (Night Train to Memphis) Heisley and will put 18,000 bums in seats for pre-season basketball, the city will retain a spot on the NBA’s unofficial relocation/ expansion list.
Well, excuse us, but again, “hoop de do.”
A lot has changed in the nearly decade-and-a-half since Big Country, Shareef, Dick (Six Tanker Day) Versace and the ghosts of Steve Francis, Sam Mack, Othella Harrington and others fled for Tennessee.
The Canucks became a juggernaut on and off the ice, fans rallied behind the B.C. Lions, we bought into MLS’s Whitecaps and fell in love with Canadians Single-A baseball at The Nat. And we can get our NFL fix with our proximity to Seattle and its Super Bowl champion Seahawks.
Vancouverites have also become even more enamoured with the outdoor lifestyle since 2001, turning road cycling into a daily way of life.
We don’t need the NBA, not for entertainment, or to pump up our self worth.
And besides, with the moptopped, B.C.-raised, two-time MVP Steve Nash nearing retirement, Canada’s NBA identity now is shifting to all the Canadian kids coming out of the Greater Toronto Area — Cory Joseph, Tristan Thompson and 2013 and 2014 first overall draft picks Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins.
Still, we won’t begrudge local hoops fanatics’ desire to see DeMar DeRozan, Jonas Valanciunas and Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins up close.
The Raptors, who were in Halifax last year and who will play a pre- season game in Montreal later this month, say getting around the country is a key part of the We The North campaign, which was unveiled last April and is the main cog in a massive franchise rebrand over the next two years.
“We are the NBA team in Canada and we want to make sure we get the team out as much as possible around Canada so that we can live up to the billing as Canada’s team,” says Bobby Webster, who joined the club last season as vice-president of basketball management and strategy after seven seasons in the NBA head office.
Tim Leiweke, president of Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment, which owns the Raptors, called the We The North campaign on its launch “a crusade. This is not just a rally cry, this is, I think, our identity.”
The Raptors were last in Vancouver in 2010, training then out at UBC. They played a preseason game against the then-Nash-led Phoenix Suns and sold out the arena.
“We’re hoping for a sellout again,” says Webster.
Besides holding training at Fortius, which offers two fullsized basketball courts and state-of-the-art medical, therapy and rehabilitation equipment, the club did a handful of community events the last few days.
The Raptors are coming off their most successful and entertaining season in years. They went 48-34 to win the Atlantic Division and then lost in Game 7 of the opening round to the Brooklyn Nets when Kyle Lowry’s potential game-winning shot was blocked at the buzzer.
“Getting to the playoffs last year was the biggest thing for us,” says Webster. “If we build a winner, fans will come. That has to be our No. 1 focus, to win.”
Leiweke has said the Raptors have an incredible opportunity given the way Canada is producing young talent and the fact “no one (else in the NBA) has 35 million people in their marketplace.”
Marketing consultant Tom Mayenknecht, who hosts a sports business show on TSN 1040, calls the We The North campaign “brilliant.”
“It’s not just Toronto, it’s meant to appeal to all Canadians,” he says, noting there was an explosion of interest on Twitter and Facebook after the launch. Making a second trip to Vancouver in four years and including Montreal in the Bell NBA Canada Series pre-season games will also pay dividends for the Raptors, he says.
“I believe that out-of-market exhibition games, if done on a regular basis, does crystallize the engagement of fans with the team, especially if you’re aspiring to be a regional franchise or a national franchise. The Raptors are clearly and more purposely than ever before taking on that challenge.”
Mayenknecht also points out that the timing is perfect given the way the Raptors played in the second half of the 2013 campaign and won their division.
“Everything is relative. If a franchise is losing and doesn’t have much appeal, you can try everything and you won’t make a connection. The timing of this, you’ve got the hold-on Grizzlies fans who would never cheer for the Raptors, but last spring they were interested in the Raptors and cheered for the Raptors given their effort in the back half of the season.”
The one thing the Raptors’ presence in Vancouver won’t do is hasten a full-time return to the city by the NBA. Too many cities, including Seattle, which lost the Sonics to Oklahoma City in 2008 after 41 seasons in the Emerald City, Las Vegas, Anaheim and Kansas City are ahead of Vancouver.
There were flurries of speculation in 2012 involving the Kings and earlier when Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini supposedly inquired about the availability of the Indiana Pacers and the for-sale New Orleans Hornets.
The Conference Board of Canada also raised expectations a couple of years ago with a report that suggested the timing was right for Vancouver to get back into the NBA. It pointed to a growing, more immigrant-based population and better economic fundamentals with the dollar at par with U.S. currency.
But the dollar, which helped sink the Grizzlies when it dropped to 65 cents, has fallen to 90 cents in recent weeks. And there are still questions about whether there’s enough corporate headquarters in Vancouver to support an NBA team in addition to the Canucks, Lions and Whitecaps.
Mayenknecht says NBA-to-Vancouver talk is quiet now and needs the “news hook of an available franchise or a proclamation that the league is looking to expand for it to be re-lit.”
He notes that for political and economic reasons, Seattle will be first when the NBA comes back to the Pacific Northwest and that the financial prospectus “isn’t all golden” now in Vancouver because of the dollar.
“Ten per cent might not seem like a lot, except when you’re talking about $ 600- million franchise fees and a new collective bargaining agreement that will be put together in the next few years that will see player costs rise.”
So hard-core local NBA fans will have to be content with watching a sloppy Raptors-Kings pre-season tilt on Sunday at Rogers Arena. The rest of us will be out sailing, riding bikes, anticipating the Seahawks’ dismantle of the Washington Redskins on TV come Monday night, gearing up for Canucks hockey or anticipating MLS playoffs.
And forgetting we ever heard of Michael Heisley, Dick Versace and Steve Francis.