The specific process for the Raptors to join the NBA is as follows:
The history of the Raptors joining the NBA can be traced back to1April 23, 993. The NBA announced that it had received a formal application from PBF (Professional Basketball Law (Plus) Inc). The president of this ambitious group is Bitove, who is the president of Bitove Investment Limited, Canada's leading food service company. (His father, John Bitove Sr, tried to join the last NBA expansion. ) PBF Group also includes Allan Slaight of Standard Broadcasting Co., Ltd., Borden Osmak, Vice President of Nova Scotia Bank, Phil Granovsky of Atlantic Packaging Co., Ltd., and David Peterson, former vice governor of Ontario and then chairman of the group.
Initially, Bitove and Slaight each held 44% of the shares, with the Bank accounting for 65,438+00%, Granovsky and Peterson each accounting for 65,438+0%. When isiah thomas, the current star of Detroit Pistons, joined, he got 5% shares of Bitowey and Slater. Thomas later became the vice president of the club and acted as the decider of the player list.
The NBA chose Toronto as its expansion destination for two reasons: first, it marked the first time that the NBA crossed the national border; Secondly, PBF is the only one of the three bidding organizations located in Toronto. In the expansion before NBA, there was competition among cities, but it was never so fierce. This is a bit confusing, but Toronto is willing and able to support an NBA team. 1989 and 1992, the NBA held two exhibition games in Toronto Sky Stadium, and more than 25,000 fans came to watch the games.
The door of NBA to Canada was opened by Palestra Group the year before last. The owner of the group is Toronto road tycoon Larry Tanenbaum. Royal Canadian Commercial Bank and Labatt Brewery have joined the group, and they are both fund partners of toronto blue jays. When Palestra refused to provide an application fee of $65,438+000,000, the NBA did not consider expansion, but the potential of the Canadian market was unstoppable.
Bill Ballard, the manager of the rock concert, also joined the bidding process, and Michael Cohl and magician Irwin "Magic" Johnson supported by the Toronto Metro also joined his camp.
1In July, 1993, the organizing committee for NBA expansion led by Sun boss Jerry Colangelo came to Toronto to meet with the bidding team and inspect their plans and venue planning. PBF is favored by the organizing Committee because it is located in the urban area: it is located along the subway, which is convenient for Toronto citizens to arrive in cold weather. And close to the financial district of the city, this convenient condition can attract many businesses to buy office areas one after another. The venue planning of other bidding groups is not so close to the city center.
The final venue plan touched the organizing committee of the NBA expansion, and they recommended PBF to have the right to own the 28th team in the league on September 30th, 65438 1995-96. On June 4th, 165438+NBA managers signed their decision, setting a new record for expansion expenses-65438+25 million dollars, which is about four times of the last expansion expenses. The organizing committee agreed that the Raptors' own stadium is under construction, that is, for their first two seasons, the main venue will be Tianqiong Gymnasium.
However, the fighting is not over yet. Due to gambling activities in Ontario, the alliance agreement may be cancelled. Pro-Line allows gamblers to bet on the results of NBA games. The alliance's long-standing opposition to this activity has encountered difficulties: Ontario is unwilling to cancel this activity, which can increase their national treasury by 1 billion dollars, and part of this money is earmarked for hospital construction. It took the trade union, PBF and Ontario three months to settle the dispute in sensitive negotiations.
Ontario finally believes that the establishment of the new NBA team will increase the local economy's tax revenue by 8,654,380,000 US dollars in the first year due to the employment opportunities of subways, tourists and 4,000 buildings and related facilities.
In order to make up for the decline caused by gambling, the club organized many youth and social activities. For NBA, they are eager to gain market in Toronto and keep good relations with new sponsors. These sponsors donated $6,543.8+$5,000 for medical research, donated $2 million to promote the development of tourism in Ontario, founded a charity fund with the Raptors, and agreed to hold the 654.38+0995 draft in Toronto.
Name game
After all these things, PBF can finally sit down and seriously deal with some issues of creating a team. A competition called "naming game" was held all over the country, which included naming the team, determining the team color and designing the team logo.
The "name game" has become one of the most popular activities in the history of the league, and * * * has received more than 2,000 names. In the end, the top ten are all monopolized by animal names: beaver, bobcat, dragon, grizzly bear and wild boar (Toronto's nickname is wild boar city. . . . Sweat), raptors, scorpions, rex cats, tarantulas and hounds.
On March 15, PBF finalized the plan. The great success of the movie Jurassic Park makes dinosaurs very popular among young people, who are the main source of fans in the future ball market. Therefore, the name of the Raptor was confirmed and displayed to the public on Canadian national television. The team's logo is a fighting little dinosaur, dribbling with sharp teeth. The colors of the team are bright red, purple, black and "naismith Silver" (in memory of Canadian james naismith who invented basketball in 189 1). In the first month, the Raptors' clothing sales exceeded $20 million. By the end of 1994, Raptors' logo was very popular in shopping malls. Although there is still a long time before the first game of the Raptors, the sales of the Raptors have reached the seventh place in the league.
Shortly after the team name was released, the Raptors began to form a management team. On May 24th, 1994, isiah thomas became the vice president in charge of team operation. Thomas has always been admired by Bitowee, who also entered Thomas' alma mater, Indiana, and has been paying attention to Thomas and Detroit Pistons since he studied at Windsor University in Ontario, which is across the river from Detroit.
1September 1994, 33-year-old Bob Zuffelato was hired by the team with rich experience in coaching, player development and scouting, and guided the team to find players with the help of video experts. Glenn Grunwald, former vice president of Denver Nuggets, 198 1 NCAA champion Indiana Hussier, 1994+0 1 became Thomas' assistant.
Near the Eaton Center Shopping Center, the Raptors' original planned location in the city center was later considered too small to accommodate the new venue. Bitove needs a large enough venue to accommodate an extra 22,500-seat ice hockey rink. This will ensure that more competitions will be held here, and it will be more economically feasible. All this was achieved when the Raptors got the famous postal delivery building in the history of Canada Post, which is located in the south of the city, in the east of Tianqiong Stadium and along the subway.
For the new venues that have not yet been determined, there is obviously no obstacle caused by the sales of team tickets. By the end of 1994, the Raptors had sold 50% of the tickets for the new season-the number of seats on the stadium was 15287. 1In February, 1995, the Raptors announced that the new stadium would be named Air Canada Center. The revised venue construction plan not only determines that the new venue will be completed in the autumn of 1997, but also plans an office area of 200,000 square feet.
The Raptors officially became a member of the NBA family on May 1995, and then, the team building work was in full swing. Toronto held their first free agent training camp at seneca College, led by Brendan Malone, a long-term assistant coach of Pistons and familiar with Thomas. Although Thomas knew Malone's ability on the basketball court, he didn't take Malone as the head coach until he heard Malone talking with minor league players and tramps who were struggling to find NBA dreams.
Five days after the training camp, Thomas announced that Malone had become the first head coach of this team. Thomas needs a player who can not only teach players, but also handle the inevitable things in a losing season with his maturity. For Malone, emphasizing defense and rebounding will be the key to this new army.
draft
For the two new forces that have just expanded their troops, Toronto Raptors and Vancouver Grizzlies, the NBA decided the order of their expansion draft and college draft by flipping a coin. As a result, the grizzly bear won the coin toss and got the sixth pick (the Raptors got the seventh pick), while the Raptors got the priority to expand the pick. Before the expansion draft, the Toronto Raptors signed Vincenzo Esposito, a star striker from the Italian League, as their first player.
1995 NBA expansion draft kicked off on June 24th. Toronto first chose Bulls guard B. J. Armstrong, although Thomas knew Armstrong wanted to be traded to a competitive team and succeed. After the Raptors selected Armstrong, the Grizzlies and Raptors began to choose people in turn until one of the original 27 teams was selected.
Thomas's hand-picked lineup includes both veterans and young people who have just debuted. He selected some tried and tested players, such as Jerome Kersey of Portland Trailblazers, willie anderson of San Antonio Spurs, Ed Pinckney of Milwaukee Bucks and John Salley of Miami Heat. At the same time, he also selected some promising young players, such as East Togno winfield of seattle supersonics, B.J.Tyler of Philadelphia 76ers, Keith Jennings of Golden State Warriors, oliver miller of Detroit Pistons, Tony Massenburg of Los Angeles Clippers, doug smith of Dallas Mavericks, Zan Tabak of Houston Rockets and Assi Earle of Boston Celtics.
1995 The university draft was held in Toronto Dome Gymnasium. The first player selected by the Raptors (ranked 7th overall) was 5 feet 10 inch, from Arizona guard damon stoudamire. Many of the 20,000 people present were surprised by this move. They expected the Raptors to get Ed o'bannon from UCLA. "When they watch my game, they will know who damon stoudamire really is." Damon stoudamire said confidently. In the second round, the Raptors chose the fourth player in the "Michigan Five Tigers" to be selected in the NBA-University of Michigan defender jimmy king.
1995-96: team pride in the first season: the best newcomer
The Raptors' first star: damon stoudamire, who won the best rookie.
As expected, the Raptors played their due achievements as a new army in the 1995-96 season, with 2 1 victory and 6 1 loss. But the Raptors also brought many surprises to people, including beating the three best teams (Chicago, Seattle and Orlando) that season.
Raptors' 5' 10 rookie guard, damon stoudamire, is a generator, leading the team with 19 points and 9.3 assists per game (fifth in the league). Stoudemire won the rookie All-Star Game MVP, the first triple-double (20 points 12 rebounds1assists beat Seattle), played more than 40 minutes in each game, won the rookie of the month twice, and finally ended his debut season with the title of rookie of the year.
Stoudemire and the Raptors beat the New Jersey Nets 94-79 in the first game of the Dome Stadium and won their first victory. In 65438+February, they defeated Vancouver Grizzlies, another new force in the NBA this season. But the most surprising and satisfying thing is that on March 24th, the Chicago Bulls men's basketball team with a record of 72 wins and 65,438 losses was defeated by 109- 108.
Isiah thomas, the general manager of the team, is always thinking about how to bring victory to the team. He added fresh blood to the Raptors at the trade deadline, including doug christie and sharone wright. At the end of the season, he took a bigger step, sacking head coach Brendan Malone and replacing him with darrell walker.