In this volume, let's talk about grizzly bears.

In fact, the Grizzlies at the beginning, it was not the current Memphis Grizzlies, but the Vancouver Grizzlies, he and his Raptors cousins, entered the NBA together, NBA President David Stern planned for several years to enter the international market, and finally, the opportunity came in 1995.

Let's not talk about the Raptors, we've already said it, and now let's just talk about the Grizzlies.

In 1993, Griffiths, the owner of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, spent a lot of money to renovate the team's arena, and in order to keep his arena from being idle during the offseason of ice hockey, Griffiths planned to build a basketball team. It just so happens that the NBA also wants to develop outside the mainland of the United States, although Vancouver and Toronto are Canadian territories, but these two cities are not far from the mainland of the United States, which is convenient for the NBA to manage, so the two sides hit it off.

The city of Vancouver is located in the southwest corner of Canada, the northwest corner of the United States, the dimension is not much different from China's Shandong Henan, only more than 200 kilometers away from the big city of Seattle in the United States, it will take two or three hours to pass through the Peace Gate Customs without queuing, and then drive south for six hours to Portland. Vancouver is surrounded by mountains on three sides, one side is surrounded by the sea, the city is generally covered by trees, and the people here are more environmentally friendly, it is obvious that Vancouver's largest industry is forestry and the affiliated paper industry, wood industry, but people do not damage the environment, the trees cut down every year are strictly controlled, the road of urban construction has always been the construction of public transportation facilities, for the highway or something is not cold, heavy polluting enterprises want to get in is even more difficult and difficult, in addition to Vancouver is also the industrial and commercial and financial center of Western Canada.

Okay, let's get down to business, let's talk about grizzly bears.

As the saying goes, joining requires a franchise fee, the NBA's most recent expansion was in 1988 New Orleans Hornets and Miami Heat and Orlando Magic and Minnesota Timberwolves who joined the group in 1989 The four teams only paid $32.5 million each, and six years later, the Grizzlies' franchise fee was $125 million, and ten years later, in 2004, when the Bobcats entered the NBA, they paid a full $500 million.

This is obviously unreasonable, prices are rising too fast, but there is no way, you have submitted all your applications, hundreds of millions of Vancouver people are looking forward to you as a big hero, at this time can you say that you don't want to do it, Griffith gritted his teeth, stomped his foot and hired David Stern to recommend Stu Jackson, who has NBA management experience and connections, to take full control, and gave the team a simple and crude name, Grizzlies, The team logo was also a simple and crude Grizzlies basketball logo, and then, on March 7, 1995, after the Grizzlies were all assembled, they sold the team to John McCaw Jr., a Seattle communications businessman.

As soon as the conversation turned, one more thing, at that time, the NBA two teams that entered the NBA together, the Grizzlies had signed back to the United States, and the Raptors still stood on the soil of Canada, many people said that it was Carter's credit, in fact, the most important thing is that the consortium behind the team is different, although the Grizzlies were formed by Canadians, but the first game of the founding season has not been played, it fell into the hands of the Americans, and Toronto has always been in the hands of a local Canadian consortium, not to mention these two teams, just the later Seattle SuperSonics, Isn't it because of the change of consortium that I moved to Oklahoma City?

After more than three months of interviews and assessments, Jackson, the team's first general manager, identified Brian Winster as the team's first head coach, Winster was 43 years old at the time, and he was also an old acquaintance of the league, a rookie in the first round and the 12th round in 1974, two or three swing men, played in the Lakers in the first year, and later was sent to the Bucks with the trade of Abdul-Jabbar, and played in the league for 9 years, including eight years for the Milwaukee Bucks, averaging all double-doubles per game, and averaging 19+ points per game in three seasons, A two-time All-Star inductee and a Bucks decorated figure, his No. 32 jersey has now been retired by the Bucks. After retiring, Brian worked as an assistant coach under legendary coach Pete Carlile at Princeton University, and was later tapped by Lenny Wilkens and promoted to the NBA as an assistant coach under him and assisted Wilkens for 9 years in the Cavaliers and Hawks to play the highest win percentage in the league at that time, and then, he was tapped by the Grizzlies and came to the Grizzlies as a head coach.

Just five days after Bryan took office, the Grizzlies and Raptors began their first round of testing, the expansion draft.

Although it has been said in the Raptors and Bobcats, it is still necessary to briefly talk about the rules of the expansion draft here.

To put it bluntly, the expansion draft is that in the 15-man roster of each team, the team can only protect 8 players, and the remaining 7 players can be selected by the expansion team at will, and each team can be selected at most one player, so as to make up the team's squad, you can think about it, a team generally only has eight or nine people into the rotation, that is to say, the players who enter the selected list are generally unimportant bench players of the team, of course, there are also high-paid and low-level players who are sent here to get rid of big contracts, The salary cap of new signings is only two-thirds of the league's salary cap, three-quarters in the second year, and normal in the third year, and in order to maintain the balance of the league, Stern cannot have the first five draft picks in the first year, and the second two years cannot have the top pick (the strength of the new team is very average, and there is a very high chance of getting a high pick in the next year, which is very unfair to those teams who struggled last season and pinned their hopes on draft picks).

In the end, after a coin toss, it was decided that the Grizzlies got the No. 6 pick in the first round of this year, that is, in 1994, and the Raptors got the No. 7 pick, but the Raptors, who were at the bottom of the draft, got the right to pick players first in the expansion draft, and the Raptors first selected Bulls guard BJ Armstrong, while the Grizzlies left the position of the first person in team history to the Knicks' organizational guard Greg Anthony.

The Knicks gave up Anthony, definitely not because Anthony was weak, but because the other players on the team were too strong at that time, the Knicks of that year, around Ewing formed a team that was enough to compete with Jordan's Bulls, each player has unique skills, Anthony is a fourth-year rookie, is in the year of playing, although the height is not high, only 183 cm, but he is full of hard work on the defensive end, not afraid of physical confrontation, and the outside line also has the projection ability to wear through Yang in one hundred steps, and Anthony is low-key and introverted, there is no negative news, A few years later, his single-handedly cultivated son, Cole Anthony, was called the best guard in the nation in '19, and the draft market was close to the top pick.

Greg Anthony is the first person on the team, but the first person on the team's first contract is not him, but Kevin Pritchard, a guard who signed the Grizzlies as a free agent, but in fact, Pritchard did not play a game for the Grizzlies, he was cut before the start of the new season, and then the 28-year-old Pritchard chose to play abroad, although for the Grizzlies, this person does not mean much, but for the entire NBA league, Pritchard has contributed a lot, since it has said this, let's talk about it.

Pritchard played at the University of Kansas when he was in college, and his coach was the legendary coach of the NCAA and NBA, Larry Brown, and Brown's assistant coaching team is more famous than the other, such as the current general manager of the Spurs RC Buford, such as having 16 years of NBA coaching experience, coaching 5 teams, and now the Pelicans head coach Alvin Gentry, and the head coach of the Spurs Popovich, after playing in the NCAA for two years, Pritchard participated in the NBA draft, And was selected by the Warriors with the 37th pick in the second round, but Pritchard did not shine in the NBA, played in the league for 6 years, moved 6 teams, was signed by the Grizzlies for the first contract in team history this season, but was cut before the season started, and then Washington Bullets signed Pritchard, played two games, and was cut again, Plitchard went overseas to play again, left footprints in Spain, Italy, Germany, and officially retired in 1998.

After retiring from the sport, Pritchard's excitement has just begun.

After retiring from the game, Pritchard was invited by Popovich to the Spurs as a scout in 2002 to see the players selected by the Spurs in recent years, John Salmons was selected with the 26th pick in the first round in 2002, Luis Scola was selected with the 55th pick in the second round, Leonardo Barbosa was selected at the 28th pick in the first round in 2003, and Benno Yudri was selected at the 28th pick in the first round in 2004. Although none of these four players have been reused by the Spurs, in the future, all of them have played well, and the viciousness of Pritchard's vision can be seen.

After Pritchard moved to the Trail Blazers, and in 2006 he worked his way to the position of deputy general manager, in this position, Pritchard showed extremely excellent operational talent, and generally newcomers came up cautious and steady, but Pritchard was not such a type, but a bold move, quick to cut through the mess, it was in this year that Pritchard operated a large number of dazzling transactions, first sent the sixth man Telfair and the block king Ratliff to Boston, in exchange for the No. 7 pick and Lafrentz, and then on the day of the draft, he sent the No. 4 rookie Terrence Thomas and the team's starting small forward Victor Kayapa to the Bulls, in exchange for the No. 2 rookie LaMarcus Aldridge, and then sent his No. 7 rookie Randy Feryega 1 million cash to the Timberwolves in exchange for the No. 6 rookie Brandon Roy, the Trail Blazers successfully found two treasures, Aldridge and Roy, in 2006, when the success rate was not high, and thus began to build a team around the two new stars. Needless to say, Aldridge has quickly grown into the second guard in the West after Kobe Bryant in the league, while Foye has always been a role player, and as for Terrence Thomas, there will always be Thomas among the players who have commented on the most wasteful physical talent.

And that's not all, Pritchard also bought the Suns' first-round pick No. 31 with cash and selected demon guard Sergio Rogrigues.

In 2007, Pritchard was promoted to general manager of the Trail Blazers, and then he was out of control, successively bringing Greg Oden, Rudy Fernandez, Nicholas Batum, Jerry Bayless, Dante Cunningham, Patrick Mills and other strong role players, transforming the former notorious "Portland Prison Team" into a strong army, and in 2010, the outstanding Pritchard fans were fired and became one of the top ten unsolved cases in the NBA. No one knows why Pritchard was suddenly fired by his boss in the draft, so I'll leave that to the Trail Blazers.

In 2012, Pritchard was invited by Bird to sit in the position of general manager of the Pacers, and then assisted Bird to bring the weak Pacers to the stage of the East Finals, which is not discussed here.

In addition to Greg Anthony, the Grizzlies got the Nets' backup center 31-year-old Benott Benjamin in the expansion draft, Jazz's backup guard 30-year-old Blue Edwards, 27-year-old Bucks guard Eric Murdoch, a base salary to free agent power forward Chris King, of course, the Grizzlies' biggest name in the expansion draft is undoubtedly the former Lakers legend, Byron Scott.

When it comes to Scott's playing career, many people's first impression is the Lakers, but they don't know that this celebrity boarded the plane to Vancouver by chance at the end of his NBA career, what happened?