The Memphis Grizzlies are currently selling tickets for as low as $2 per seat. They are averaging the 5th worst attendance in the league at 16, 833 which is worse than half of the Vancouver Grizzlies seasons almost **30 years ago** when average attendance league wide was much lower than now.
Am I still petty that Memphis took our team? Absolutely.
But I can also guarantee you’d be hard pressed to find tickets to a Vancouver NBA game for the price of a quarter of a water at Rogers Arena. Not to mention I’m positive that Vancouver could do better than the 5th worst attendance in the league.
I look forward to seeing salty Memphis fans in my DMs, but just remember you would be frustrated too if a worse market stole you’re NBA team, and then showed poor support to an actually talented team.
Edit: for anyone interested in discussing the future of the NBA in Vancouver, join r/vancitygrizzlies
Edit 2: for everyone saying that I’m making up the $2 tickets, heres proof:
[$2 tickets vs Utah](https://www.vividseats.com/memphis-grizzlies-tickets-fedexforum-11-29-2023–sports-nba-basketball/production/4556729)
[$3 tickets vs Minnesota](https://www.vividseats.com/memphis-grizzlies-tickets-fedexforum-11-26-2023–sports-nba-basketball/production/4556725)
[$5 to watch Luka and the Mavs](https://www.vividseats.com/memphis-grizzlies-tickets-fedexforum-12-11-2023–sports-nba-basketball/production/4556735)
by AllOutRaptors
45 Comments
How old were you in 2001?
Fuck you too buddy
are there even any grizzly bears in Tennessee?
>Worse than half of the Vancouver Grizzlies seasons
Mkay and then what about the other half?
Memphis is fine, but OKC having an NBA team is insane. Take theirs instead.
Their superstar, center, other point guard, other power forward are injured, nobody wants to spend money to see the 13th man be forced to get a lot of minutes, in a guaranteed loss
maybe it has more to do with Ja being suspended.
Move the Nets back to New Jersey
Celtics broadcasters raved about Toronto and its stadium, rogers arena got the same thing going on basically. Maybe less car access and more boring city overall but the coin they’d make would be worth it.
They’re best putting moves in place and timing this with the next rapotrs run as the popularity of bball was defintely just revived in BC since 2015 ish. But yeah they’d sell out every night and have everything you need in place as is.
Fuck off
Pretty sure ticket sales were up the last 3 seasons for Memphis
Nah, eat shit bro. No one deserves to have their teams taken from them, especially a market like Memphis. Expansion is the answer, not relocation.
The Grizzlies attendance this season (16,833) would still be the 2nd highest of the Vancouver era.
Let the man complain he got his team stolen from him lmao
I wanted to go to the preseason game in vancouver, but when I checked the day of the tickets were 160 for the worst seats. Totally a market here.
FUCK STEVE FRANCIS
I am all for it. We would cut the number of annoying raptors fans in half
Aren’t the gun laws really strict in Canada? Not sure that would mesh with this roster.
David Stern wasnt fucking with the PNW teams
hey OP, sending good vibes your way. this post feels like transference – is everything okay? I’m here if you want to talk about whatever it is that’s really bothering you
It’s been over 20 years.
The Grizzlies are Memphis’s team now (technically Robert Pera’s), and as long as the owner is fine with having the team here then they’re not going to move. If Memphis’s attendance was truly a problem, then he would be the person most affected by that problem.
If Vancouver wants an NBA team, then they need to focus on getting an expansion team. Or just hope and prey that Pera decides he wants to move the team, but there’s no indication that’s the case, since there’s generally been a good relationship between the franchise and city leaders.
The Vancouver Grizzlies was the worst franchise in sports. The Memphis Grizzlies haven’t been great the whole time, but they’ve been a hell of a lot better than the Vancouver Grizzlies Memphis has always been a basketball town, and it makes sense to have an NBA team here. If you go into any bar in town, there’s a good chance you’ll see someone wearing griz gear, and that’s not always the case in a lot of other cities.
We love our Grizzlies here in Memphis, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
Why would I go into your DM’s?
I’ve had the Grizzlies in my town for three times as long as you did.
In other words… scoreboard.
Fuck off
Not before the Supersonics get reinstated in Seattle!!!
Where Adams goes, New Zealand will follow
Bruh it was 30 years
Do yoga or something. Holding this anger in for that long cant be good for you
Besides the attendance isnt an issue
Worst team in the league missing half the starting lineup?
Its fine. It would be a problem if they had bad attendance last two seasons. Pull up those numbers
Good on OP looking out for the owners and stakeholders, someone’s gotta do it!
Edit: You Canadians should link up with Houston folks and form a little Hater Squad against Tennessee sports
I live in Vancouver and as much as I would love a team here, idk if it’s feasible.
– Our basketball culture is nothing like Toronto’s or most US cities. You could argue that this is a chicken and egg situation, though.
– Seattle is getting a team next year(?). We’re too close to them.
– The Raps would lose their reputation as “Canada’s team”.
– Lots of NBA players absolutely hate the cold. Vancouver’s pretty temperate but still…
I’m going to Memphis next week and got excited that I can check out games for $2, but all Ticketmaster is showing me is $31 for the Timberwolves game.
Please let Verno see this.
Lmao at Memphis “stealing” them.
You can do a quick Google search and see why they moved in the first place. The previous owner had to sell because they were a money pit.
The NBA, including Stern himself, didn’t want them to move. It reflected badly on the NBA that the team was forced to move literally 5 years after expansion.
/r/nba: memphis fans have such a victim complex they don’t get any more hate than any other team
also /r/nba:
memphis resident
can you direct me to the $2 tickets
LOL you think NBA players on their pitiful mid-high 7 figure salaries can afford Vancouver rents?
History lesson for OP:
The Vancouver Grizzlies were NBA franchise #29.
Why such an odd number of teams? Because the NBA was only going to expand to have 28 teams with Toronto, and Commissioner David Stern wanted to be more aggressive with expanding internationally so he just threw in a second franchise to fast growing Vancouver.
The NHL Canucks had just built a brand new stadium and the owner was willing to pay the expansion fee, so why not!?! It didn’t matter that the market wasn’t huge on NBA fandom; if you build it, they will come!
The ownership group knew nothing about basketball, so they just listened to the NBA on things. The team was going to be named, “Vancouver Mounties.” That was nixed when the Canadian Royal Order of Mounted Police demanded that nickname not be used. The the ownership group took on of the Toronto rejects… Grizzlies! They even used the Toronto logo design. Hey, there are grizzly bears in the area!
The team designed the ugliest uniforms in NBA history (which oddly enough become popular retro merch) that they were hoping to would match the success of the popular Charlotte Hornet jerseys, logo, and colors which led to many imitators in sports (remember the 90s Pistons colors and logo?). So the main color was teal and the logo was extremely cartoony. The uniforms were changed in the sixth or seventh season to black with teal highlights. During that first season, from my understanding the tickets were really cheap, purchasable via a major Vancouver retail outlet (I believe a grocery store). The games were heavily papered too. 1995 Vancouver was not crazy about NBA basketball.
The organization listened to the suggestion of the NBA and hired former coach Stu Jackson as general manager. Stu Jackson was super inept and kept the product on the court horrible his whole tenure, six of the seven seasons. He made some deals that screwed the franchise long after he was gone and the team relocated. The on the court product was not winning fans in the market,
The Canucks and Grizz were sold to a new owner. The new owner did not want to keep the money losing Grizzlies. So the Grizz were sold again. Originally to Bill Laurie; brother-in-law to Nuggets/Avs owner Stan Kroenke. Laurie announced he was relocating the team to St. Louis to play along side the St. Louis Blues NHL team that he owned. David Stern blocked the relocation to STL, which caused the purchase to collapse. Chicago billionaire Michael Heisley swooped in to buy the team for $40 million less than Bill Laurie. Heisley promised to make it work in Vancouver. He even sang “O’Canada” during the first game of the 2000 – 2001 season.
During the season, Heisley announced making it work in Vancouver was a lost cause. The market didn’t care much about the team so attendance wasn’t good. It was understandable because the franchise was horrible all 7 seasons and despite having talented players, they never had the chemistry to win. They drafted a bust in Antonio Daniels (who became a journey man role player) in 1997 (following Bryant Reeves was mid and Shareef Abdul Rahim who was a jobber for the stars), and tried again with a point guard in Mike Bibby who was really good in 1998. The franchise missed out on finding a way to get local product Steve Nash who had a disappointing rookie year in Phoenix. In 1999, with the number 2 pick, the third straight point guard was selected, Steve Francis. Francis was very vocal about not wanting to go to Vancouver. That whole fiasco made for another embarrassment for the franchise, which traded Francis to Houston where he was co-Rookie of the year. In 2000, the Grizz drafted Stromile Swift in possibly the weakest draft class in NBA history. The fans just weren’t there.
What was worse economically though, wasn’t the lack of fans in the market. The worse issues were that the Grizzlies played in the building owned by the Canucks, and as a result, received less in-stadium revenue. They didn’t get parking, ad revenue, luxury suite, etc, Also in 2000/2001, the Canadian dollar was at an all-time low against the US dollar. Since NBA salaries were paid in US dollars but the stadium revenue was in Canadian dollars, the team was losing lots of money.
Heisley wasn’t originally considering Memphis. At the time, what we in Memphis didn’t know is some super wealthy people were secretly negotiating with the Charlotte Hornets about moving to Memphis. So David Stern directed Heisley towards Memphis. Memphis had two huge sports advertisers that David Stern wanted to spend money with the NBA, FedEx and AutoZone. Memphis had investors willing to buy a minority share of the team. And unlike Vancouver, NBA basketball was really popular in Memphis.
Memphis, Anaheim, New Orleans, and Louisville were the cities most likely to get the team. Memphis got it because the Pyramid was sufficient as a temporary stadium, FedEx was really behind the NBA coming to town, and the city was willing to build an arena the Grizz would control.
The nickname stayed Grizzlies because Memphis accepted it. There was a popular minor league football team that had been called the Memphis Grizzlies in the 1970s so the nickname wasn’t foreign to the market. The popular college team is nicknamed the “Tigers” so there was good symmetry there. If the name would have changed, it would have been “Memphis Express” but the NBA nixed that idea because FedEx announced they would pay the team to take that name and would have a jersey patch logo. The NBA announced that wasn’t allowed and teams wouldn’t have sponsors on the jerseys.
Memphis is a smaller market than Vancouver. But hey, Winnipeg is even more small than Atlanta. How many Thrashers fans are talking about how much better it would be if the team was in Atlanta?
What the hell did this team do to y’all for you to hate them so much? From the how people are treating Dillon Brooks now that he’s not part of the Grizz to the JJJ stat padding nonsense to this stupidity, it’s like they fucked your wives or something
$2 ticket, and $60 fees lol
Fuck off
Everyone in this thread needs to watch the documentary called “the grizzly truth” about how and why we lost the team. It’s well done and a fun piece of basketball nostalgia from that era. I promise I’m not just saying it because I am one of the super fans that is in it. We lost the team because we had individual businesses owners and the Canadian dollar took a nose dive during the formative years which made it really hard financially on the owners. Also we got fucked out of having a top 5 pick for several years and our management blew it by drafting a guy who clearly didn’t want to be here. Yeah Francis should have been an adult about it and gave the city a chance but still, why did we draft him? Fan attendance was never the main issue at all. We showed up pretty fucking well to support a losing product right up until the lockout anyways. That was when overall sentiment towards the league took a nose dive everywhere and the league lost its main box office draw (that would be MJ for the young ones).
It’s ridiculous to expect fans to pay money to see crap teams w/o the stars playing
Eat a d. This is all memphis has and it’s an extremely poor majority minority city.
You have a ton to do in Vancouver.
THANK YOU. As an Albertan, having to root for Toronto hurts, I want the Grizzlies back.
Pretty PLEASEEEEE
Pro sports in the U.S. need to be similar to Soccer. Suck too bad and you drop down and they bring up a new team
I don’t know how Memphis got a pro team.