Given that so many young Canadians—many from the Greater Toronto Area—are making an impact in the basketball world, it’s becoming harder and harder to go unnoticed.
Well, now you can add Jerry Stackhouse to the list of those realizing that the Great White North is fast-becoming a basketball hotbed.
The retired 18-year NBA veteran is reportedly set to establish a new AAU team in Toronto, according to the fine folks at North Pole Hoops.
Stackhouse has been in the AAU game since 2011, with his Stackhouse Elite teams already playing out of Atlanta and North Carolina. The Toronto team is expected to focus exclusively on the the 16-and-under age group.
The increasingly crowded and talented summer club landscape in the city and around the country should provide a stiff challenge for the upstart team, although having an NBA connection will certainly help attract players.
And on top of the Stackhouse affiliation, the team will be coached by former Toronto Raptor Jermaine Jackson, who spent parts of two seasons in the early 2000s with Canada’s lone NBA franchise.
“[Toronto] is like my second home, I’m there all the time,” Jackson, who now coaches high school basketball, told North Pole Hoops. “I know what AAU did for me, so why not help another kid?”