After signing a new Collective Bargaining Agreement earlier this week, the National Basketball Association is looking to expand.
According to basketball blog 16 Wins a Ring, the NBA has identified several cities as frontrunners to land a basketball franchise for either the 2018-2019 or 2019-2020 season.
Those include Mexico City, Seattle, Louisville, Las Vegas and Vancouver.
While Mexico City and Seattle are most likely to land a spot in the NBA, to grow the game internationally and replace a franchise that was moved under contentious circumstances, respectively, Vancouver covers both of those bases.
“Vancouver is a place that the NBA is interested in having a team back in,” said Keith Smith, who co-authored the 16 Wins a Ring article. “They’re trying to figure out a way to make that happen at some point in the future.”
Some of the pros of a team in Vancouver, as outlined in the post, include:
Former home of the Grizzlies. Major city on the west coast of Canada which would help form a strong Northwest presence (with Seattle and Portland) for the league. They have an NBA-ready arena and similarly to Seattle they have fans who still love basketball after their team left town. Most importantly, the NBA would like to prove that they can make it work in Vancouver if given another chance.
As for the cons?
Any NBA team has to compete with the Canucks in hockey-mad Canada. That is considered to be almost a lock to be a losing proposition. Vancouver isn’t quite as cosmopolitan or international as Toronto, so drawing in NBA fans is seen as a difficult task in an already difficult climate.
We’re leaning DO IT, DAMN IT! on this one.
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