Veteran Canadian basketball star Carl English is coming home.
The St. John’s Edge of the National Basketball League of Canada (NBLC) announced Wednesday that they have signed English, giving the 36-year-old shooting guard a chance to play — and likely finish his professional career — in his hometown of St. John’s, N.L.
“To play at home, where it all started for me, it’s going to be exciting not only for me, but our fans,” English said in a statement. “I want to thank the Edge ownership, management and coach [Jeff] Dunlap for the incredible opportunity to play in front of my hometown fans.”
This will be the Edge’s inaugural season in the NBLC, with the club kicking off play on Nov. 18 against the Island Storm in Charlottetown, P.E.I. St. John’s first home game will be Dec. 1 against the St. Catharines, Ont.-based Niagara River Lions.
English played high school basketball at St. Thomas Aquinas in Oakville, Ont., in order to get more notice from NCAA schools. He went largely under-recruited during this time but managed to catch the eye of Hawaii where he would go on to star, becoming the seventh-leading scorer in the school’s history.
Following his collegiate career, he would go undrafted in the NBA but ended up having a very successful European professional career that includes a Spanish League championship in 2010 and a 2013 Spanish League scoring title.
Throughout the majority of his professional career, English was a fixture on the Canadian senior men’s national team and became one of the faces of the team after Steve Nash retired from international competition in 2004.
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