After the 1994-95 NBA season, the league added two expansion teams - Toronto Raptors and
Vancouver Grizzlies.
Toronto is obviously still around and doing pretty good.
Not too long after joining the league they got their superstar in Vince Carter.
In the first year of being an NBA team they had the third highest attendance numbers in
the league of 29 teams.
Everything was pretty smooth.
Well, everything was not so smooth for the Vancouver Grizzlies.
NBA history books can confirm that the Grizzlies are the worst team of the 90’s and in total
the Vancouver Grizzlies were around for just 6 seasons.
Hey everyone.
I’m PRPLPRNCH and today I want to talk about the worst franchise in NBA history - the Vancouver
Grizzlies.
The start was good.
Vancouver Grizzlies won the coinflip against Toronto Raptors and had to choose between
a higher NBA Draft pick and the first pick in the NBA Expansion Draft.
Vancouver chose to have a higher pick in the draft, so the first pick of the expansion
draft went to Toronto.
With their first pick in the expansion draft, the Grizzlies selected point guard Greg Anthony
from the New York Knicks.
Grizzlies first NBA draft pick was a 7ft 275 pound center Bryant Reeves.
Bryant Reeves had a solid rookie season averaging 13.3 points and 7.4 rebounds, but still nothing
spectacular.
Overall as a team, in their first season Vancouver Grizzlies won only 15 out of 82 games and
finished with the worst record in the league.
While Grizzlies defense was average, their offense was just awful.
They finished with the worst offensive rating and the least scored Points per game.
5 Vancouver players were averaging double digit points, but no one was averaging more
than 14 points per game.
First year wasn’t a success.
As hard as it is to believe, the next year was even worse.
Vancouver Grizzlies finished with only 14 wins in 82 games which was the worst record
in the league, but to be honest, only 1 game worse than the 15 wins by Boston Celtics.
Offense was still non-existent - last place in every major offensive category except points
per game where they were 2nd to last.
To make matters worse, their defense fell off as well.
From a positive point of view, the 3rd pick of the 1996 NBA draft Shareef Abdur Rahim
was pretty good for the Grizzlies averaging 18.7 points and almost 7 rebounds per game.
And heck, even Big Country Reeves had a career year with 16 points and 8 rebounds and got
awarded a 6-year 61.8 million dollar contract which was a mistake.
In 1997-98 season Vancouver Grizzlies finally weren’t the worst team in the league anymore.
Their offense picked up bigtime.
From being the worst offensive team the last few seasons to the middle of the pack.
Most of the scoring load was carried by the two so called stars of the Grizzlies in Shareef
Abdur-Rahim and Bryant Reeves who still produced after getting his big contract.
Unfortunately, as the offense picked up, the defense sunk down to a new low.
Grizzlies had the 2nd worst defense in the league.
So essentially they traded bad offense and average defense for an average offense and
a bad defense which gave them about the same results.
19 wins in 82 games and not even close to being a playoff contender.
1998-99 NBA season wasn’t a full season because of a lockout.
Teams started playing games only after January 20th, 1999 which led to a 50-game season.
And Vancouver Grizzlies went back where they belong.
To being the worst team in the league.
Grizzlies won only 8 out of 50 games which was one game worse than the 9 wins the Clippers
had.
Shareef Abdur Rahim was doing his thing averaging 23 points per game
and Grizzlies had a good young point guard in Mike Bibby.
But the complimentary star Bryant Reeves was struggling with weight issues and injuries
and ended up playing just 25 games posting the lowest outputs of his career.
And this season they had the 2nd worst offense and the 3rd worst defense, so pretty logically,
no success.
1999-2000 season started very similar to the ones before.
Vancouver Grizzlies had a record of 4 wins and 18 losses and finally they decided to
switch the head coach.
After getting just 31 win in 154 games Brian Hill was out as a head coach.
He got replaced by Lionel Hollins who didn’t bring the Grizzlies to the playoffs, but at
least finished the season with a more respectable 18 wins and 42 losses.
As a result, the most successful season for the Grizzlies since entering the NBA with
22 wins.
Sad, but that was the truth.
Bryant Reeves played in more games, but still struggled with weight issues and wasn’t
very productive.
Shareef Abdur Rahim averaged a double-double and Mike Bibby averaged 14 and 8.
Grizzlies also got some good contribution from recently acquired shooting guard Michael
Dickerson who averaged more than 18 points per game.
All these positive signs however weren’t enough to finally get the team to the playoffs.
And it just wasn’t meant to be.
The 2000-2001 season was the last one for Vancopuver Grizzlies.
They changed the coach once again.
And the new head coach Sidney Lowe led his team to the best season in the franchise history.,..
With 23 wins in 82 games.
Sounds ridiculous.
Well.
It was.
Vancouver Grizzlies had 3 good players in Rahim, Bibby and Dickerson and that’s it.
Bryant Reeves was long gone as a productive big man and fans weren’t interested in the
team losing so the attendance dropped as well.
It was time to relocate the team.
Vanocuver Grizzlies started to lose money after the 1998 NBA lockout.
The average attendance fell by more than 2000 people and the owner Orca Bay Sports and Entertainment
started to lose money.
Vancouver Grizzlies could’ve been the St.Louis Grizzlies in 1999, but the 200 million dollar
deal was stopped by the NBA.
Instead after a year, the Grizzlies team was sold to Michael Heisley for 160 million dollars
who at first wanted to keep the team in Vancouver but after seeing the last season reports decided
to move the team to a city in the US.
There were a lot of choices - Nashville, Las Vegas, New Orleans, StLouis and others, but
Memphis was chosen as the place were the new Grizzlies would rise again.
So here’s the story of the worst franchise in NBA history.
What do you think went wrong?
Why Toronto is still kicking and Vancouver doesn’t have a team anymore?
Leave a comment below, like this video and subscribe for future nba content.
Thanks for watching.
This was prplprnch, and I’m out.