ABSTRACT

Despite injury, Canadian point guard finishes with 14 points and seven assists in the Suns' 113-93 loss to the Trail Blazers in Vancouver

Don't think Canucks Sports and Entertainment wasn't watching on Thursday.

They saw every fleck of National Basketball Association showmanship, and every dollar to be reaped from 40-plus additional dates at General Motors Place, after the Phoenix Suns and Portland Trail Blazers drew a record-tying audience of 19,699 for Steve Nash's homecoming.

In any other city, Nash skips this pre-season game with a brittle right ankle, and rests up for Phoenix's regular-season opener next week. But the Victoria-raised point guard is a crowd-pleaser, and when done to its optimum, so is the in-game experience of the NBA .

"I would say that it was a pretty conscious decision," he said. "I wasn't going to play tonight if we weren't in Vancouver."

Nash knows his brand, and he is also a product of the NBA's star-making machine, the promotional arm that can take a helmet-less athlete and market them the world over. So when the marquee attraction was on the bench after 14 points in 23 minutes - ice pack on his foot and done for the night - he had the presence of mind to toss his sneakers into the stands and quell a chorus of "we want Nash" during a bland a fourth quarter.

Afterwards, he noted how fans bought tickets in the middle of a recession - not to mention hockey season - and transformed the arena into "Phoenix North." Nash said it convinced his teammates that Vancouver could again be an NBA market, and deserves a better hand than the doomed-to-fail Grizzlies, who relocated to Memphis in 2001 after six losing seasons.

"Someone said they were glad that our owner wasn't here because he might want to move the team," Nash said following the 113-93 defeat. "It's a lot to ask to fill an arena for a pre-season NBA game, especially because it's not the best of times."

This province will host another Olympics before it produces another two-time NBA MVP, but as much as this was Nash's fete, it was a flashback to the days of the Vancouver sports conglomerate. Canucks Sports and Entertainment produced the game, and there was an easy recall to a decade ago when the company owned an NBA franchise.

Members of the Aquilini family, who bought the company post-Grizzlies, watched from courtside seats alongside chief operating officer Victor de Bonis. Surely someone in the crew must have acknowledged the possibilities.

All went swimmingly other than the fact that people simply didn't leave. They were waiting on Nash and the autographs they knew would come because?well, he's Nash, and that's his M.O. in B.C.

Besides the man of the hour, the NBA has a proven entertainment template, and this night was no different.

The sexy dancers danced, hip hop beats replaced the strums of Stompin' Tom Connors, the mascot got up to his trampoline act, and the floor-level society types - unobstructed by the glass and boards of a rink - got their face time.

Players from the NHL's Canucks lined the front row, which made a Basketball game seem like a commercial for a hockey team, a reinforcement of the company's core brand.

When the usual heroes' faces appeared on the big screen - along with their wives and girlfriends, who are seldom seen by the Vancouver public - the masses gave them the Jack Nicholson treatment. At one point, Ryan Kesler appeared to be cheered on both ends of a trip to the men's room.

In the gallery, fans in teal Grizzlies jerseys holding a "bring back the NBA sign" were given the second-loudest ovation, and when it was all said and done, people were pressed up against the team buses, seeing the players off as they do following hockey games.

"I feel like it was unfair that the [ NBA ] team was taken away from the city," Nash said. "I think my teammates are in total agreement."