Despite losing an NBA franchise after just six seasons, Vancouver sounds like it has plenty of basketball fans in the area.
The Golden State Warriors and Toronto Raptors are set to play a preseason game at Rogers Arena on October 1st.
Within minutes, tickets to the game were sold out once they became available to the public. This game has special significance attached to it, as it’ll be Kevin Durant’s first official game in a Warriors uniform.
The game figured to be a bigger than normal draw for a preseason game, just because of the hype that has been attached to this Warriors team this offseason.
It doesn’t hurt that the Raptors are perhaps the Cavaliers’ main threat to unseat them in the Eastern Conference.
I have family up in Vancouver, and I usually reserve my sports talk with them to hockey matters. I think they’re Raptors fans, though.
I know for a fact that they didn’t continue to root for the Grizzlies after they left for Memphis. Relocation is always a complicated issue that individual fans have to come to terms with.
It’s purely anecdotal, but from what I hear, most displaced Grizzlies fans just switched over to the Raptors and follow Canada’s one professional basketball team.
It’s a weird situation to be in, though. Vancouver is about as far away from Toronto as Oakland is from Detroit.
It’d be like if the U.S. only had one professional sports team in a league, and that team was located in Detroit.
Fans in the Bay Area might feel compelled to root for the one team in their country, but there’s still a strange feeling of detachment being that far away.
Fans in Vancouver don’t really have many options, though. Based on pure geographic proximity without the hinderance of national boarders, they once had the Seattle SuperSonics as an alternative.
With the Sonics relocating to Oklahoma City as the Thunder, though, Vancouver basketball fans probably have an especially bitter association with the business side of professional basketball.
At the risk of reading way too deeply into fan reaction of a preseason game featuring perhaps the most anticipated NBA squad in recent memory, this quick sellout really prompts a discussion of whether Vancouver deserves another chance at an NBA team.
The enthusiasm for basketball is certainly there, but it’s hard to ignore the attendance figures the last few years the Grizzlies played in Vancouver, which were dismal.
A weak Canadian dollar exacerbated issues, and Steve Francis refusing to play in Vancouver after being drafted by them 2nd overall in 1999 didn’t help matters from a credibility perspective.
Francis’ actions might have been misguided, but it’s hard to argue that a city can viably attract big name players when something like that happens.
There’s been a few instances of regions getting a second chance with a professional sports league (Minnesota with the NHL or Cleveland with the NFL) but it doesn’t appear like there’s anything on the horizon with Vancouver and the NBA beyond preseason games.
For the foreseeable future, the fans in Vancouver will have to be satisfied that they get the first opportunity to see Durant in a Warriors jersey take the court with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, and Draymond Green.
Seattle needs a their basketball back before we can discuss a team in Vancouver
Van City already has a NBA ready arena….unfortunately Seattle does not!