Canada is having its sports moment and SGA proves it

Breadcrumb Trail Links

Atlantic CanadaHalifax OpinionHalifax SportsOpinionSports

Article content

When I heard that Hamilton, Ontario’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had been named the most valuable player in the NBA, I had someone I wanted to call. 

“This guy is as good as any guard in the history of the game,” said Brian Heaney, whose opinion on this subject matters.  

Not just because after being a hoops star at Acadia University, the Rockway Beach, N.Y.-boy became the first Canadian Intercollegiate Athletic Union player to suit up for an NBA team, the 1969 Baltimore Bullets.  

Article content

But also because, after an equally storied coaching career, he became an analyst on Toronto Raptors television broadcasts and in the early 2000s had his own show on NBA-TV Canada in which he compared the legendary players of yesterday with the stars of the moment.  

So, SGA’s well-deserved award also confirms something Heaney has known for a long time: Canada punches above its weight when it comes to basketball talent. 

Florida Panthers forward Brad Marchand celebrates his overtime winner in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinal against the Toronto Maple Leafs in Sunrise, Fla. Photo by Florida Panthers

In fact, we could extend that pugilistic metaphor a little further because Canadian athletes are having a genuine moment. 

This week, a couple of our own, Sidney Crosby and Nathan MacKinnon, have been leading Canada on the international hockey stage at the IIHF Men’s World Championship, hoping to repeat their emotional victory at the 4 Nations Face-Off in February. (Canada lost to Denmark 2-1 on Thursday and was eliminated from contention.)

Article content

Meanwhile, Hammonds Plains’ Brad Marchand has been a big factor in the Florida Panthers’ deep NHL playoff run.  

We have come to expect hockey dominance in the country where the sport was born. But tennis? Last year, Felix Auger-Aliassime became the first Canadian man to reach a final in a prestigious clay Masters event and took home an Olympic bronze medal in mixed doubles. 

Or swimming. During the same Paris Olympics, 17-year-old Summer McIntosh won three golds and a silver. 

Or major league baseball. As far as I can tell, 13 Canadians — the most in more than a decade — are now on rosters? 

Basketball, outside of hockey, is where our talent pool is deepest.  

Sidney Crosby is playing in his first IIHF World Hockey Championship tournament in 10 years. Photo by IIHF

According to Basketball Canada, 21 Canadians were on rosters at the start of the 2024-25 NBA season, the most of any country outside the United States.

It’s not all guys who are excelling. By my calculation, four Canadian women are playing in the WNBA, which next year adds its first Canadian franchise, in Toronto. 

Article content

Heaney isn’t surprised. A host of factors are behind the game’s ascent in the birth country of the sport’s creator, James Naismith. 

For starters, the grassroots nature of the game.  

“It’s cheap — just a hoop, sneakers and a ball — and fun, with lots of scoring that makes kids come back the next day to play again,” said Heaney, who now runs a financial services business but before the advent of the three-point line once scored 74 points in a single game for Acadia. 

In time, coaching arrived, as did national certification programs, while leagues and organizations — national, regional and local — emerged, particularly in the country’s fast-growing cities that became basketball hotbeds. 

As government funding grew, so did facilities where players could dribble, shoot and rebound year round. In time, a basketball culture emerged in this hockey-crazed country.  

Article content

Here’s one way Heaney knew the game was catching on. When coaching at the University of Toronto back in the mid-1980s, he used to run summer basketball camps for kids. 

Last year, Felix Auger-Aliassime became the first Canadian man to reach a final in a prestigious clay Masters event. Photo by Danielle Parhizkaran /USA TODAY Sports

“We had one in Brampton, home to a guy who played a little hockey and wore number 99,” he told me. Nonetheless, hundreds of campers showed up to learn how to box out and pick-and-roll in Wayne Gretzky’s hometown. 

All this organic growth, he said, meant that “the sport was up for an explosion in Canada when the Raptors arrived.” 

The Toronto NBA franchise, which played its first game in 1995, and the short-lived Vancouver Grizzlies, who joined the league the same year, legitimized the game in Canada.  

Kids in elementary and junior high could watch Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Vince Carter on television at night and go out the next day in gyms and on playgrounds and try to imitate what they had seen. Before long, athletic Canadian youths who could dunk and shoot the three-ball began to envision futures that involved big professional contracts to play a game in a gym, rather than a rink. 

Article content

The dream lives here, where a pair of Nova Scotians — Dartmouth’s Lindell Wigginton and Bedford’s Nate Darling — have recently taken the court for NBA teams.  

It helped that they had role models, including Steve Nash, who was born in South Africa but raised in Victoria, B.C., and went on to win a pair of MVP awards during his 18-year NBA career. 

“Looking back in the ’60s and ’70s, I guess the seeds were worth planting,” said Heaney. 

Read More

The list of current Canadian NBA standouts will anchor a team that could contend for a silver and even a gold medal at the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. 

Gilgeous-Alexander will be the centrepiece.

“He’s a fabulous three-point shooter, he can get to the goal, he can pull up at any time, which no one does anymore,” said Heaney.

He’s an original in more ways than one. But in the Canada of today, there’s surely one kid out there, bouncing a ball as you read this, dreaming of being the next SGA.

Article content

Share this article in your social network