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For all the buzz we’re going to hear about ‘will Vancouver be next for the NBA?’, the fundamental financials of basketball ownership remain
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Published Mar 25, 2026 • 4 minute read
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Former Vancouver Grizzlies’ star Shareef Abdur-Rahim takes a shot against the Utah Jazz in 1999. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann/Province /PNGArticle content
As Howard Tsumura once told me, after the Grizzlies’ last game as a Vancouver squad in 2001, Bryant (Big Country) Reeves said to my former Province colleague: “Well, see you next year.”
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He didn’t understand that newspaper reporters didn’t come as a package with the team.
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For years afterwards, I like to imagine that Howard would put in a call every summer to the general store in Gans, Okla., near the ranch where Reeves went off to after his bad back ended his career — he never set foot on the court in Memphis, Tenn. — and would leave a message with his number, asking them to let Country know he had called.
I also liked to imagine that one day Howard would get Country on the phone to tell him that he could come back to Vancouver now. He didn’t have to be an urban legend anymore.
For all the inevitable buzz we’re going to hear about ‘will Vancouver be next for the NBA?’ now that the league is going back to Seattle, the fundamental financials of basketball ownership remain.
This isn’t a sport for people who don’t have the deepest of pockets.
As Defector’s Ray Ratto rightly pointed out in a Wednesday column about the apparent return of the Supersonics, NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s job is really hard because of the class of owner he has to herd.
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The Phoenix Suns being sold for US$12 billion is instructive here: as Ratto notes, no billionaire is going to sacrifice half their wealth on a single sports team, which means you have to start talking about people worth $30 billion or more. According to Ratto’s math, there are only 120 people in the world who have that much money to their name and also don’t already own an NBA team. (Four of the NBA’s current 30 owners are worth US$30 billion or more.)
Bryant ‘Big Country’ Reeves (left) defends against Steve Nash of the Dallas Mavericks at GM Place in 1999. Photo by Gerry Kahrmann/Province /PNG
And so that’s the first prospective challenge to the idea of Vancouver ever getting a crack at the NBA again: Who would actually own the team? And then there’s the question of venue.
But even with that, Postmedia News columnist Tom Mayenknecht remains a believer that the NBA will one day come back to the Lower Mainland. Mayenknecht does know the game, after all. Long ago he was the Vancouver Grizzlies’ vice-president of communications and remains very tied into the business of sports both locally and across North America through his own marketing outfit — Emblematica Brand Builders — and his weekly radio show The Sport Market.
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“I’m among those who say never say never,” he said Wednesday, hours after reports surfaced that the NBA was set to discuss moving forward with a pair of NBA expansion teams in Seattle and Las Vegas. “In the business of sport those who say ‘never’ are most often wrong.”
He reiterated the admission by the late NBA commissioner David Stern that letting the Grizzlies leave for Memphis was the lowest moment of his time running the league.
That said, it was always clear that there would be no reconsideration for Vancouver until after a team was restored to Seattle. That appears set to happen. There have been more than a few parties who have expressed interest in owning a revived Sonics franchise, but most seem to think a group with ties to the NHL’s Seattle Kraken and the Oak View Group, who run Climate Pledge Arena, are most likely to get the call from Silver.
Seattle lost their Sonics to Oklahoma City in not too dissimilar fashion to how the Grizz bolted for Memphis: “In both cases wolves in sheep’s clothing,” Mayenknecht lamented. It’s small consolation to Vancouver hoops fans that Memphis is so poorly regarded as a home city by so many NBAers. TV personality Stephen A. Smith wasn’t wrong about that.
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That’s one of Vancouver’s calling cards: it’s a global city. It’s a city that has profile abroad. That’s the kind of thing the NBA is after.
“The league puts such a premium on global cities, I do believe they want more ‘Pacific Gateway’ cities,” Mayenknecht explained. “Vancouver would round it out, with L.A., San Francisco and now Seattle back in.”
It’s expected the future owners of the Las Vegas and Seattle teams will have to pay anywhere from US$7 billion to US$10 billion for a team.
Although he long ago ruled out the idea of sole ownership, conceivably Vancouver Canucks owner Francesco Aquilini could partner with someone but that’s never really been how they do business. More likely, though still remote, would be the Aquilinis selling to a much-more-moneyed consortium, who would then bring the hockey team and basketball team and the arena all under one umbrella. But that seems unlikely.
And so the question becomes: Could someone else just build a new arena and put the basketball team there? Sure, but the list of people who could afford to do all that is very short globally, let alone in Canada.
In the end, the answer to the NBA coming back, like getting Big Country on the phone, is elusive.
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