PREPARE TO FLY
Basketball’s prep schools have one goal for their players: get them to the next level,
Isolated on the right, six-foot-seven guard A.J. Lawson collected the ball and sized up his defender. In front of him stood Matur Maker, a six-foot-11 NBA prospect playing his final season at Mississauga’s Canadian International Basketball Academy. Beyond Maker loomed the hoop and an opportunity.
Lawson veered through the lane, leapt toward the rim, and collided with Maker mid-air. He made the basket with his left hand, made the free throw with his right and, with 27 points in an exhibition game arranged to showcase Maker, made an impression on the roughly 30 pro scouts present.
Lawson has emerged as the best Canadian player enrolled at a Canadian school this season. He already has a scholarship offer from the University of Oregon and has visited perennial NCAA title contender Kentucky. Lawson attributes his blossoming game to two developments: his 10th-grade growth spurt, and his transfer to GTA Prep in Mississauga.
The privately run program, which partners with the Peel District School Board, is part of a trend transforming how Canadians develop elite basketball talent, offering an immersive hoops education aimed at earning NCAA scholarships, but often at a steep cost. Annual fees for out-of-town students at GTA Prep can reach $28,000.
Proponents call it an investment. Jamal Murray went from Orangeville Prep to the University of Kentucky to the Denver Nuggets. Milwaukee’s Thon Maker went straight from Orangeville to the NBA in 2016.
Lawson says his experience at GTA Prep, complete with three-a-day workouts, will help him fast-track to the league.
“Some college coaches have already talked to me about (playing one season and entering the NBA draft). They think I can be one and done right now,” Lawson said. “Coaches should know that because that’s my goal, and coaches want to help me get one and done at their program.”
If Lawson reaches the NBA, he’ll join a stream of Canadian talent that has deepened over the past decade and a half. The league featured just three players from Canada in 2003: Toronto’s Jamaal Magloire, Winnipeg’s Todd MacCullough and Victoria’s Steve Nash. By last year, Canada had become the NBA’s secondbiggest source of talent. Twelve Canadians, including eight from the GTA, have suited up for NBA teams this season.
The upsurge came as top players began opting out of local high school programs for U.S. schools, seeking more intensive coaching and tougher competition. Where Magloire starred at Eastern Commerce in the mid 1990s, players like Tristan Thompson, Corey Joseph and Andrew Wiggins all finished their high school careers in the U.S. But it started to feel like a talent drain to many in Canada’s basketball community.
“After kids started leaving for prep ball in the states, that really killed our talent pool,” said Tariq Sibet, who runs the Toronto-based basketball recruiting service North Pole Hoops. “As guys were leaving, we weren’t really giving ourselves a chance for (the Canadian basketball) industry to elevate.”
Several prep programs have sprouted across Ontario in response, offering players enhanced coaching, high-level competition and exposure to college scouts. Some are beefedup basketball teams at established private schools while others, like GTA Prep, are partnerships between private operators and school boards. Still other prep teams grew out of existing high school programs.
But most charge a fee and none play in traditional scholastic leagues. Two years ago Sibet established the National Preparatory Association, a 15-
“Some college coaches think I can be one and done right now . . . and want to help me get one and done at their program.” GTA PREP’S A.J. LAWSON
team national circuit he compares to the Canadian Hockey League. The Ontario Scholastic Basketball Association, meanwhile, comprises 12 prep teams spread across Ontario.
Vaughan Secondary School, where Wiggins won a provincial title in 2011, still fields boys and girls teams in its local league, but added an OSBA team in 2016.
“If we didn’t make the transition to become part of the trend, the program at Vaughan was eventually going to peter out and become a regular high school program where you’re not dealing with elite kids,” said Vaughan Prep head coach Gus Gymnopoulos. “We didn’t want to see the program go in that direction. We had to shift our thinking . . . because that’s the just the way the game’s been going.”
Lawson was an all-star at Brampton’s St. Marguerite D’Youville Secondary School, but GTA Prep head coach David Cooper argues his skills would have plateaued if he’d stayed in a traditional high school program that prioritized wins and losses. Cooper says most high school teams would play Lawson at power forward because of his height, but he plays Lawson at guard because that’s where he’d fit in an NBA lineup.
Cooper says the prep setup, which unapologetically targets NCAA scholarships, frees him to treat winning as a byproduct of individual development. “We’re built solely around our development, and we develop all their talents. I don’t want them to understand and run my system. Who knows where they’re going to be recruited to? We want them to adapt to any system.”
Lawson has averaged 22.9 points and 3.4 assists in league games this season, but in the shifting landscape of Canadian high school basketball it’s difficult to know exactly where he ranks.
The title of Best Canadian High School Player likely belongs to R.J. Barrett, a senior at Florida’s Montverde Academy who will play at Duke next fall. He’ll join another U.S.-based Canadian — Simi Shittu of the Vermont Academy — at the McDonald’s All-American game in March.
And the top prep player in Canada is probably the Sudanese-born, Australian-raised Matur Maker, who recently announced plans to enter the 2018 NBA draft.
But among Canadian-raised basketball players prepping in Canada, Lawson stands out.
“At 6-7, as a combo guard with the ability to shoot the ball, that’s rare to find, especially at this age,” Sibet said. “Two years ago he wasn’t even on the radar. He’s just kind of coming into his own now. Coming into his confidence.”
Where it leads in the short term still isn’t clear. At 17, Lawson is completing his fourth year of high school and could head to the U.S. on scholarship this autumn, joining Barrett, teammate Andrew Nembhard and Sittu in a supercharged Canadian recruiting class.
He’s considering returning to GTA Prep for a post-graduate year, which could allow him to circumvent the NBA’s minimum age requirement and enter the 2019 draft if his coaches feel he’s ready.
But Lawson also showed up at a recent practice sporting a University of Kentucky T-shirt and shorts, and said the outfit wasn’t a coincidence. His friend Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is already on the team there, and head coach John Calipari openly courts players who plan to jump to the NBA after one collegiate season.
“I’m looking to do well, bring my team to March Madness, get a championship by first year,” he said. “I want to make noise so people in the NBA can hear about me. I want to be a one-and-done.”