Neither Dick Versace, president of the Memphis Grizzlies, nor John Calipari, coach at the University of Memphis, have lived in this city long enough to know it.

But they already like it. And they have lived here long enough to share the same, recurring dream. It makes them both smile.

"It's us winning an NBA championship, and John's team winning the national [NCAA] championship," Versace said before a recent Grizzlies game that Calipari attended. "Then Memphis really would be the basketball capital of America. It might happen a little quicker for John than for us, but it could happen one day for both of us. This city deserves it."

When the NBA allowed the Vancouver Grizzlies last summer to become the Memphis Grizzlies, it tapped into an unusual basketball hotbed, where a tradition-rich college program will thrive in a relatively small market alongside its big-time, professional-sport counterpart.

"The Grizzlies have been great for us," said Calipari, a former NBA coach in his second season with the Memphis Tigers.

"People ask me all the time, 'How could you want them here?' Well, we've got our 18,000 season-ticket holders. That's not going to change. It's good for our fans, too. This is a basketball town, and more basketball here is good."

Memphis landed the Grizzlies over other serious suitors such as St. Louis; Louisville, Ky.; Anaheim, Calif.; Las Vegas; and New Orleans. It wasn't because of Graceland, the daily Elvis look-a-like parades, the barbecue, blues or the riverboat rides down the Mississippi.

It was because of the support for basketball. It isn't the blind support for the NBA that happened during the late 1980s in places such as Orlando, Miami and Charlotte, N.C. It was serious interest from knowledgeable basketball fans who already knew the game from watching their hometown Memphis Tigers.

It was about major corporate support, politicians who weren't afraid of bold, potentially unpopular steps, an understanding of what professional sports can do for a city's image, and the ability to find funding for an upcoming, state-of-the-art arena -- even when the current old one was built 10 years before.

"This city is an anomaly," Versace said. "This is football country, the mid-South, but they absolutely love basketball here.

"There's a great college tradition here. This southern hospitality is a real thing. You can reach out and touch it. I heard someone say we haven't done well. We've done extremely well under the worst of circumstances."

The Memphis Tigers regularly outdraw the Grizzlies, who are averaging 14,817 fans. One reason is that the Tigers are good (21-4), and the Grizzlies (14-35) are bad.

But the biggest reason is that the Grizzlies had only three months to sell season tickets (9,900) before their first exhibition season began. Unlike former expansion teams such as Orlando, Miami and Charlotte -- which had more than a year to sell tickets before their first games -- the Grizzlies didn't know where they would be until the end of June, when the league approved the move from Vancouver.

A year from now, they expect to have 3,000-5,000 more season-ticket holders.

They already have everything else in place. FedEx Corp already has committed $100 million to naming rights for a building that is expected to open for the 2003-2004 season.

As part of the move, a group of Memphis businessmen -- including AutoZone founder J.R. Hyde III -- purchased a combined 49 percent of the franchise from Grizzlies majority partner Michael Heisley, giving it a strong local flavor.

And the Grizzlies did exceedingly well in their first draft in Memphis, acquiring the rights to Pau Gasol of Spain and drafting Shane Battier of Duke. They likely will finish one-two in the NBA's Rookie of the Year balloting.

Both teams play now in The Pyramid, a 20,000-seat arena that the Grizzlies have sold out only four times this season. They did it on opening night against the Detroit Pistons. They did it against the Los Angeles Lakers and Shaquille O'Neal, Philadelphia 76ers and Allen Iverson, and against Michael Jordan and the Washington Wizards. Against teams such as the Orlando Magic, they drew only 17,344.

"We had the benefit coming in of the newness and a honeymoon," said Mike Golub, Grizzlies business operations manager. "But we didn't have the benefit of a selling season. I felt about two years behind [when I arrived]."

The Grizzlies have been treating this season almost like a "soft opening," that many businesses use before their official "grand opening." That will come in two seasons when the new building opens.

In the meantime, it's all about laying the groundwork, erasing their sorry but short history.

It's why they traded Shareef Abdur-Rahim, their best player, before the team even landed in Memphis.

They were a bad team in Vancouver, never winning more than 23 games in their six seasons.

The league finally admitted that going to Vancouver, a vibrant, international city, was a mistake. Going to Memphis was not.

"When this becomes what I know it can become in Memphis, it'll be an event, and not just a basketball game," Heisley said.

"Memphis is better than a lot of NBA cities. We have the most diversified audience in the league -- race, culture, everything."

Although Calipari was a disaster when he coached the New Jersey Nets, he sounds sincere in his support of the Grizzlies. He has given the university a dynamic personality to push them back to prominence among NCAA teams. He also sounds sincere in his support of the Grizzlies.

Unlike Rick Pitino at the University of Louisville, who didn't want an NBA team sharing the spotlight and the hearts of his basketball fans, Calipari took the opposite approach. And it might work.

He said the intensity of the interest in his program actually was overwhelming, and he's glad that the load has been lightened by the Grizzlies.

"The interest in basketball here is 24 hours, seven days a week. The local paper was writing about things like where I lived, how many points I paid on my mortgage, things like that," Calipari said. "Now, the glare isn't blinding anymore. It's more enjoyable for all of us. There is plenty of room for both teams."