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Vancouver named 29th NBA Team.

April 27th, 1995 | by Washington Post

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The National Basketball Association owners unanimously approved a Vancouver franchise today, six months after admitting Toronto. Both teams will begin play in the 1995-96 season.

"Vancouver is a beautiful, fast-growing city," said David Stern, the NBA's commissioner. "It's got a great seaport, great restaurants and great fans."

Vancouver and Toronto will be the first Canadian teams in the NBA since the Toronto Huskies in 1946-47, the league's inaugural season.

Vancouver will play in the Midwest Division of the Western Conference. Toronto will be in the Eastern Conference, but the division has yet to be determined.

The addition of Toronto and Vancouver will give the NBA 29 teams. The franchises must pay an entry fee of $125 million, nearly four times the $32.5 million paid by the four expansion teams in the late 1980s.

But Vancouver owner Arthur Griffiths thinks it's a good investment. He said 7,000 people already have agreed to buy season tickets to watch the team play in a 20,000-seat arena now under construction.

"We've been overwhelmed by the response," said Griffiths, who also owns the National Hockey League's Vancouver Canucks and the new arena. "We are confident the NBA will be a big success here."

While hockey remains the number one sport in Canada, Griffiths said basketball is growing in popularity, especially in Vancouver.

"We have more high school and college teams than anyplace else in Canada," he said. "When I drive around my neighborhood, I see kids playing basketball all the time. I see them wearing Chicago Bulls jerseys and Phoenix Suns shirts. Now they'll be wearing Vancouver paraphernalia."

The team was going to be called the Mounties, but that name has been scrapped because of licensing problems with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

"We're going to do some test marketing and come up with another name," Griffiths said.

Griffiths said he plans to hire a general manager by the end of the summer. "We want someone with credibility, respect and a strong track record," he said. "We want somebody who knows how to build a franchise from the bottom up."

An expansion draft will be held in the summer of 1995 to stock the two teams, which will take unprotected players from existing clubs. Each expansion team also will get a pick in the first round of the 1995 college draft. One team will pick sixth and the other seventh.

Stern, who has marketed the NBA on a global basis, said he doesn't anticipate any more expansion before the end of the century. However, he did mention Mexico City as a future frontier.