If there was a question about the NBA in Canada, especially in those embryonic years of the early ’90s, chances were that Russ Granik was called for an answer. As deputy commissioner of the league, Granik was quoted in Canadian newspapers about the groups bidding on expansion teams, the arenas in which they hoped to play and the conditions they would have to meet in order to win a franchise.
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He might not have been the father of the Raptors or the Vancouver Grizzlies, but he was in the delivery room leading up to 1995, when they both arrived on the court. Granik was part of the negotiations with the Ontario government to curtail betting on NBA games, and he was the one who nudged the Raptors on their winding journey out of SkyDome and into Scotiabank Arena.
It was Granik who had to explain why the NBA barred both Canadian expansion teams from winning the NBA Draft Lottery for their first four years in the league. Now, from his post as vice chairman of Galatioto Sports Partners, in New York, he is watching one of those teams compete for its first NBA title.
On Thursday, Granik fielded questions from The Athletic, talking about the uncertain early days, the growth of the game in Canada and those competitive restrictions the NBA placed on the Raptors and Grizzlies. (The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.)
Did you ever see basketball becoming what it’s become in Toronto, with Jurassic Park as an example?
(Granik chuckles) I’m not sure that we anticipated exactly what would happen, with the names like Jurassic Park, et cetera. But I think certainly we had hoped that the sport would catch on in the way that it has. … We all believed in our sport and thought Toronto was an absolute no-brainer market. We were pretty optimistic about where it could go.
It still seemed like it was a bit of a leap of faith to move into Canada.
Well, it certainly was something new. And any time you do that, there’s some element of risk involved. It obviously didn’t work as well for us in Vancouver at the time. I don’t think it was all that brave a move, because really, Toronto, we understood the size of the city and how exceptional a market it was — and that the sport had started to get some roots.
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What was the most attractive part of Toronto for the NBA?
I think it was mostly the size and the demographics of the market: How many corporate offices there were in the area, how many professional firms. Frankly, we were always impressed by the Maple Leafs. They’d been such a success. People who wanted to have season tickets for the Maple Leafs couldn’t always get them. That made us feel pretty good that the NBA might be able to get a toe-hold.
What was your initial impression of the fanbase, and the level of education it had in the game?
I don’t really think it needed that much education. Playing in a dome was never a wonderful thing, but it was hardly novel for the NBA. At that time, we had played in domes in Seattle, Detroit, Houston and San Antonio. Even though it was never the greatest environment, we were used to it. I don’t think fans needed a huge education. I think they weren’t used to the pace and the intensity of an NBA game, and I think that’s something they eventually became accustomed to and appreciated.
This is a tough one to distill, but how did the NBA survive in Toronto, but not in Vancouver?
(chuckles) I mean, the easy answer is just that Toronto got more of a head start. They were just more successful. It clearly was a larger market, where they were able to be a lot more successful financially — or at least less unsuccessful in the early years, because an expansion team was never something that anybody thought would print money right away. But I think they were able to do better financially than the Grizzlies were in Vancouver.
(John E. Sokolowski / USA Today)Looking back, do you think the NBA was too restrictive in keeping the Canadian teams from having that first overall pick for the first four years?
That’s always a difficult issue. You have a lot of NBA teams back then — and now — that haven’t ever been in the Finals. And you have others that have struggled for a long time on the court. It was always our philosophy in the NBA that, to make an expansion team too good at the beginning was kind of not fair to some of the existing teams. I think that might well have made it much harder for us to get the votes needed from the existing ownership to expand, if some of these real prime assets were going to be taken out of the player market very early. Obviously, the NHL has a different philosophy, when they have a team that comes in last year and goes to the finals. It was never a surprise to the people who bought both the Raptors and the Grizzlies. … We didn’t try to kid anybody. It was clear.
Does it seem funny now that one of the real sources of tension through the expansion talks was that the Ontario government allowed betting on sports through Pro Line?
Well, sure. You can’t help but see the irony in it now, because you’re right: That was one of the most difficult parts of the negotiation. They were a little easier on the subject, as I recall, in British Columbia. But in Ontario, that was a difficult issue. I had to go up there and negotiate … and we had to convince them — that we just weren’t going to expand if there was legalized gambling at the time. That was just how all the sports leagues viewed gambling back then.
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Given what’s happening with sports gambling now, was Ontario just ahead of its time?
(laughs) Well, no. Because you had Nevada doing it. And they had brief forays in Oregon and maybe in Delaware. … I don’t think it was a particularly novel, brilliant idea that Ontario had at the time. It was just something that the American sports didn’t want to see.
What pride do you take in helping open the door to the NBA in Toronto?
There’s no question that I do feel some special connection to the Raptors, because of how involved I was. … I would say we were very fortunate with a series of just really good people we dealt with in Toronto. I still remain occasionally in touch with John Bitove. And Larry Tanenbaum is one of the finest gentlemen I dealt with in my years at the NBA. I think that’s a big part of why the team’s been successful. It is pretty rewarding to see what they’re accomplishing, and have accomplished.
There has been some discussion this spring about whether basketball might one day overtake hockey as the primary sport in Toronto: I’d love to know your thoughts on that.
(laughs) That’s too big a question for me. You’d have to ask Adam Silver that one. And I’m not sure he’d want to offer an opinion, either. I think we always did — and I’m sure in the NBA, they still do — respect hockey’s place in the social structure in Canada. … I think the NBA can thrive whether it can someday reach that zenith or not in Canada.
(Top photo: Peter Power / Getty Images)
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