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Friday, March 16, 2001
New owner would be group's best hope



NEW YORK – The NBA is making it clear to those who want to keep the Grizzlies in Vancouver: show us your new owner or you will lose your team.

New Orleans
expects answer soon
A group vying to make New Orleans the new home of the NBA's Vancouver Grizzlies expected to hear from team owner Michael Heisley or his associates early next week.

The group's official offer was sent Thursday by overnight delivery to Heisley's business office in Chicago. A woman who answered the phone there Friday she knew nothing about whether it had been received. No one else was available to comment, she said.
-- Associated Press

"We're a long way from a solution and the clock is ticking," deputy commissioner Russell Granik said Friday after a two-hour meeting with representatives of "Save Our Grizzlies," the group trying to keep the seven-year-old franchise in the Canadian city.

The meeting came as Michael Heisley, the Chicago businessman who bought the Grizzlies last year, continued his tour of the United States seeking a city for a team he claims will lose more than $40 million this year.

Anaheim, Louisville, Memphis and New Orleans are the leading contenders, but an outsider stepped in Friday when the Chicago suburb of Dixmoor said it was talking with Heisley about moving the team there. Heisley has until March 26 to find a site, an extension from the original March 1 deadline.

Vancouver's best hope appears to be finding an owner or a group to buy the team from Heisley. Peter Ufford, a spokesman for "Save Our Grizzlies," said a potential buyer would meet with Heisley and his associates in Chicago this weekend.

But Granik said that Ufford had not given the NBA the names of any prospective buyers.

Ufford said representatives of four separate Vancouver groups were meeting in an effort to determine who will be the front man for any offer.

"They all like each other. But they don't know each other very well," Ufford said. "It's largely a matter of wanting to know something about their partners."

But he acknowledged: "A change in ownership alone will not solve the problem."

The team almost moved a year ago, but the league scuttled an attempt by Bill Laurie, owner of hockey's St. Louis Blues, to buy the Grizzlies and move them to St. Louis.

But in the face of continuing losses -- both financially and on the court -- commissioner David Stern gave Heisley permission in February to explore U.S. markets. At that time, Stern put the deadline at March 1, then extended it to give the Vancouver group time to seek a way to keep the team.

Ufford said that his group was slow getting started.

"For the first three weeks we were in shock," he said. "In the last two weeks, we got to work."

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ALSO SEE
St. Louis out of running in Grizzlies sweepstakes

Louisville makes its pitch for Grizzlies

New Orleans to submit Grizzlies offer on Friday




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