With Vancouver city council’s recent push to bring a Major League Baseball team to the city, it got me thinking about the last time a major league team was brought to the city. Because they didn’t last long. 

This is the story of the Vancouver Grizzlies.  

On opening night in 1995, the NBA had arrived in Vancouver 

Inside a brand-new arena, under bright lights, the Vancouver Grizzlies took to the court for the first time. The jerseys were bold. The crowd’s energy was infectious, hopeful, and ready to believe. Basketball was still finding its footing in Canada. And now it had a home on the West Coast. 

Vancouver didn’t get the Grizzlies by accident. In the early 90s, the league was expanding and thinking of growing the game globally. Canada had a stable dollar and looked like a smart bet. To the NBA, this wasn’t a small or risky market. It was a city that looked like it was on its way to becoming a major international hub. 

Which is why in 1995, the NBA had a Canadian expansion class. Bringing in the Vancouver Grizzlies, and the Toronto Raptors. 

So why did one work and eventually win a championship, and the other moved less than a decade into their history.  

The timing to bring in the Grizzlies could not have lined up better. The construction of Rogers Arena (then General Motors Place) had just finished. giving Vancouver a modern, NBA-ready venue. 

This was not seen as a long shot or risk for the NBA. This wasn’t foreseen as being a long term, meaningful way to grow the sport.  

However, that’s not the way things turned out.  

The NBA’s expansion rules at the time limited how competitive new teams could be. High draft picks were restricted. While other franchises built toward relevance, Vancouver found itself treading water before it ever had a chance to swim. 

Let’s skip to the on-court product. The Gizzlies had some serious drip. The team was repping some beautiful turquoise jerseys with accents of bronze, red, and black. Not to mention a really cool logo of a grizzly bear clutching a basketball. 

https://www.twitter.com/NBACanada/status/1854342635999351214

Unfortunately, good looks don’t result in good games. The Grizzlies never finished with a winning record in a season and only hit 20 wins twice. This meant Vancouver never got to experience NBA playoffs. A shame. 

Their most marketable player was 7ft tall Bryant Reeves, better known as Big Country. When you have NBA legend Shaquille O’Neal frequently citing Big Country as one of his most difficult matchups, you’d think that you have one of the top players in the league. And for the first three years of his career, he kind of was. 

Reeves would average around 16 points per game. That not all-time record-breaking numbers, but that’s still a top of the lineup guy. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much help from his teammates.  

It got even worse for Reeves in his fourth season. He only started in 14 games and fell to just under 11 points per game. Not cause for long term alarms yet for the team, but with hindsight being 20/20, this was the beginning of the end of Reeves NBA career.  

Over the next two seasons, Reeves would suit up for almost all of the games. But his scoring ability was gone. Like it was stolen from him by the Monstars in Looney Tunes level of gone. Reeves would not average over 9 points a game during those final seasons. 

In an ironic turn of events, the Grizzlies, only 6 years into their existence, announced they would be relocating. Vancouver hadn’t been the spawning ground to grow the game like the NBA though it would be. The Canadian dollar was drastically dropping. Being based in an Canadian city, the Grizzlies revenue was in CA, but they needed to play their players in USD. Every season brought deeper financial strain. They weren’t successful or financially viable to keep in Vancouver. 

And just like that, the Grizzlies were headed for Memphis City. 

 Vancouver’s former star player, Bryant Reeves followed the team to Memphis, planning to continue his basketball career. Reeves would suit up for two preseason games with the Memphis Grizzlies before his body could not do it anymore. 

Reeves would retire from the NBA due to chronic and severe back pain caused by degenerative issues.  

In a twist of horrible irony, the team being moved from Vancouver was like it broke their once thought to be franchise cornerstone’s back. For a further in depth look at what happened to Bryan Reeves, check out the Finding Big Country documentary. It’s a good piece of work. 

Now, the Vancouver Grizzlies story is often told as a cautionary tale. A failed franchise. A black mark on Vancouver sports. 

Because for a brief moment in the mid-1990s, Vancouver was part of the NBA’s future. And in a blink of an eye,

it was gone.