A new arena with a better luxury box situation would make it at least a plausible success. How many of the oil and gas head offices in Calgary have texan business associates that they would love to impress with a box suite to a NBA game? Probably a large enough number to fill every suite in the new building. On the surface, I'd say the demographics just aren't in the stands for putting a franchise in Calgary; Toronto has success because they have an extra 2 million people, and because they have a very European population, which suits the changing identity of basketball. We just don't have those demographics. But the thing that makes me wonder is the often mentioned but never proven statistic that there's something like 80,000 Americans living in Calgary. I'll say right now, I don't believe that statistic, but if it were true, it would represent a significant, silent population in Calgary that could be much more receptive to locating a basketball team here. It's not as if all Americans like basketball, but certainly a greater proportion of them do than the average born-and-raised Calgarian.
Anyway, it's not going to happen; there are a lot of much better untapped markets. But I have no doubt that a Calgary franchise would be at worst around the attendence of Memphis (worst in the league at 12,000 per game), and have the corporate arrangements to make those sorts of numbers enough to support the team.
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