Determining where a movement starts is always a tricky proposition. Incidents have antecedents. There is almost never a single moment, person or factor that ever perfectly explains anything, and the wave of Canadian basketball talent that is crashing at the 2014 NBA draft is no different.
But some events stand out. Ripples that grow into swells and eventually make it to a distant shore where everyone finally takes notice.
For Ro Russell the beginning was when he looked around at the quality of high school players tearing up the court at George Brown College’s Casa Loma campus summer league in the mid ’90s and thought to himself: “Man, there are some good players here.”
It has always been the case. That three Toronto-area products—Andrew Wiggins, Nik Stauskas and Tyler Ennis—are expected to be taken in the first round of the 2014 draft, with as many as five other athletes possibilities for the second round, is confirmation that all that was required was time and circumstance to intersect.
“The talent has always been there,” Canadian men’s national team GM Steve Nash said Wednesday. “When I was coming up there were so many talented athletes in Montreal and Ontario, but they could never quite turn the corner. The reason they have is the coaching has improved, access through AAU and prep school in the States, the Internet—there’s no secrets any more and our kids have taken full advantage.”
But that had to start somewhere, and when it did the Internet wasn’t quite as crisp as it now.
Russell, 45, remembers it well. After his epiphany on the courts of George Brown he began doing research about where he could take an all-star team from the George Brown summer league to play in the U.S. and hopefully get the attention of some NCAA college coaches.
There were challenges, such as dial-up connections.
“The Internet used to be so slow,” says Russell. “This Internet thing was the biggest thing. You had to go to the library and go online to find places to play, but it took so long.”
He eventually found a tournament to take a van full of players to and quickly found that his instincts were right: Toronto kids could compete. Two of them got scholarship offers on the spot, while U.S. coaches were incredulous that so many good players could come from such a distant land.
“They were like, ‘Hey you have some players in Canada. I had no clue, I thought it was just a hockey country,’” says Russell, who is now based in Phoenix.
The initial success prompted Russell to start the Toronto area’s first elite AAU program, Grassroots Canada, with a clear goal of barnstorming the U.S. summer circuit.
The approach—novel at the time—quickly gained traction, as did the concept of placing kids in the U.S. for parts or all of their high school careers.
It wasn’t without controversy—and Russell has taken his share of it—but over time the results spoke for themselves. Of the seven Canadians taken in the first round since 2011 only Andrew Nicholson and Kelly Olynyk didn’t go to prep schools while all eight of the Canadians hoping to get drafted at the Barclays Centre Thursday night spent a good portion of their high school years in the U.S.
But being Canadian remained a central part of their stories. Even on the AAU circuit where selfish play is often the norm, Grassroots and later CIA Bounce—the programs where the likes of Wiggins, Stauskas, Ennis, Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph and the rest cut their teeth—often stood out because they played as a team.
As they ventured into the U.S. they were outsiders and were able to remain unified as they played not only for themselves but for their flag.
“We’ve always had a chip on our shoulder,” says Stauskas. “It was like we had something to prove.”
The ultimate test for Canadian basketball’s ‘golden generation’ is if they can eventually come together and duplicate that feeling while competing internationally. Canada has never won a medal at an Olympics or a World Championships. The national program has struggled for so long they’ve only appeared in the Olympics once since 1988.
Now no country other than the United States will be able to field a roster with seven first-rounders the way Canada could in next summer’s qualifying tournament for the 2016 Olympics.
“With all this talent right now, anything is possible—the next Olympics, anything,” says Wiggins. “We’re going to give people a run for their money. We’re going to surprise some people.”
Says Stauskas: “I’m not going to sit here and say we’re going win the gold medal and we’re going to beat the U.S., but I’m saying that I think we’ll have a chance at it if we put everything together. I mean, who thought we’d make it this far? Who knows what can happen in the future?”
It’s a magical thought for those who were there in the not-too-distant past, when Canada against the world meant a rented van, McDonald’s food and reversible jerseys with numbers drawn on by hand.
But the best thing about where Canadian basketball is going compared to where it was not that long ago is that it’s not going back anytime soon.
“We broke down the borders,” says Russell. “Now guys can hope and dream. It’s a legitimate goal for them… give it a couple more years and there will multiple guys getting drafted in the first round again,” says Russell. “It’s not going to be a fad. It’s not going to stop.”