Where in the world is Big Country?
Posted September 30, 2018 10:08 am.
Last Updated September 30, 2018 10:10 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) — He was the big, big man in Vancouver when the NBA’s Grizzlies played here, so you’d think it would be hard to lose Bryant “Big Country” Reeves.
A new documentary on NBA in Vancouver could not locate the six-foot-10-inch tall former Big, and this became a bit of an obsession for director Kat Jayme.
Without giving away anything in the film, which is premiering at the Vancouver International Film Fest, Jayme spends a lot of time in the hunt for Bryant Reeves, but it’s also about the love of basketball, and despite the team’s dismal record, what the Grizzlies meant for a lot of people here.
“Anyone who grew up here in the 90s, they’re a huge part of our childhood and it was just so exciting to be able to go to a game in our own backyard,” Jayme tells NEWS 1130.
The documentary is aptly named “Finding Big Country” and Jayme, who is a Vancouver Grizzlies superfan, says they talked to a lot of people involved with the NBA in this city.
“One of the goals of this project is to get the buzz going to start a movement. I would love to have a team here and I feel like having the Grizzlies here played a huge riole in my love for the game,” Jayme tells NEWS 1130. “The only player that we’ve haven’t been able to find was Big Country.”
There are rumours that Reeves resides in Oklahoma, but Jayme says she spoke to a lot of his former team mates, veteran Vancouver reporters and former Grizzlies employees and even they had no useful information.
One clue could be that Big Country’s son, Trey, plays basketball for Oklahoma State University.
In its short run, the Vancouver Grizzlies set a record for the worst six-year span in NBA history with 101 wins and 359 losses.
Finding Big Country premiers tonight at 6:30 p.m. at the Vancouver Playhouse.
