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.
This might be a good time to point out that the largest markets in the US/Canada without an NBA team are:
Given the size of the NBA, many teams near the top of this list would be worthy candidates for expansion, and better locations for a franchise than many current franchises.
(As a note: Tampa was omitted, because of this weird thing where if a league has a team in Tampa [MLB, NHL, NFL], it won’t have one in Orlando, and if a league has a team in Orlando [NBA, MLS], it won’t have one in Tampa. It’ll probably be the Tampa-Orlando metro area in the near future anyways. Also: Baltimore, because it’s now the Washington-Baltimore metro area.)