Women’s team welcomed to new home.
Banner day as Canada sets up shop at Saville
The holiday is still days away, but on the hardwood in Edmonton, Thursday was Canada Day.
It began in the morning, when Edmonton welcomed Canada’s senior women’s basketball team to its new home at the University of Alberta’s Saville Community Sports Centre. The team that made it to the quarter-finals in last year’s Olympics in London was there, in the flesh, while Edmonton Mayor Stephen Mandel and Basketball Canada president and CEO Wayne Parrish celebrated the moment and spoke of their hopes for more success in the next two Olympics.
“We think of Edmonton as the 13th player or the 18th player, given that we have 17 players here,” said Parrish, looking at the women’s team, “that is going to get us to the Olympics in Rio and the podium, perhaps there or a few more years down the road.”
The average Edmontonian may not know it yet, but Canada’s next great Olympic story could be writing its initial chapters here over the next four years. What Christine Sinclair did for Canada’s bronze medal-winning soccer team in London last summer, Taber’s Janelle Bekkering, or Kayla Alexander, from Milton, Ont., who went eighth overall in this year’s WNBA draft, will be looking to do in Rio in 2016.
“There are women in this program that are going to do that over the next three or four years,” said Parrish, who’s also the chief operating officer for Postmedia Network Inc., owners of the Journal.
“Maybe it takes the combination of seeing those women perform in person and then having those two or three break through to that international star status that will get Edmontonians and Canadians to sit up and say, ‘OK, I get it now.’ ”
Developing Canucks
Parading the women’s team out onto the floor of its new home was just the beginning of a proud day for Canada.
The fireworks came Thursday evening, when the Cleveland Cavaliers shook the basketball world and made Brampton, Ont.’s Anthony Bennett, a six-foot-eight power forward from UNLV, the No. 1 pick in the NBA draft.
The 20-year-old is the first Canadian to go first overall and eclipsed his now Cavs teammate Tristan Thompson for the highest-ever Canuck selection. Thompson went fourth overall to Cleveland in 2011.
Kamloops-bred seven-foot centre Kelly Olynyk, an NCAA all-American at Gonzaga this year, who as a high school senior drew comparisons to Dirk Nowitzki, was taken by Nowitzki’s Dallas Mavericks 13th overall. He was quickly traded to the Boston Celtics for draft picks.
Thursday morning, Parrish said he’d be watching the draft and rooting for Bennett, Olynyk and Toronto-bred Texas Longhorn Myck Kabongo, a promising point guard who was speculated to be a secondround pick, thanks to his sophomore season being shortened by a 23-game NCAA suspension for taking impermissible benefits. Kabongo went undrafted Thursday night.
Echoing the sentiments of Canada’s senior men’s head coach Jay Triano last summer, Parrish said the growing number of Canadians in the NBA is the key to getting the men’s team back into the Olympics — something it has missed since 2000 — and having an impact there.
“If things go right in the draft and the guys are drafted by the right teams and get with the right programs, we could start the next NBA season with more players than France has or any other international country,” Parrish said.
A Canadian player wasn’t expected to go first overall in the draft until 2014, after Andrew Wiggins of Thornhill, Ont., completes his freshman season with the Kansas Jayhawks. As a high school senior at Huntington Beach Prep this year, Wiggins has drawn LeBron James-like attention from college and pro scouts.
Watching these young players’ development, Parrish said he can only hope that players are as fortunate as Cory Joseph. The Toronto native just completed his second season in the NBA with the San Antonio Spurs. “If only all of our guys could be drafted by San Antonio, right?” Parrish said.
“There’s no doubt in my mind, I’ve long believed that San Antonio is the franchise in professional sports across all four leagues that I admire the most.
“The way that they develop players, the way they develop people, is unbelievable.”
Parrish should be happy with Bennett a Cavalier and Olynyk a Celtic, with both teams rife with opportunity for young players.
“They’ve got to be in good situations, they’ve got to be in the right situation, so we just hope … that Anthony, Myck and Kelly go to the right situations and the right teams. They can’t all play for San Antonio and hopefully the ones that they go to will be good programs that understand the value of developing those players.”
As Argentina (gold in the 2004 Games) and Spain (FIBA World Cup gold in 2006, Olympic silver medals in 2008 and 2012) have shown, those developed NBA players can have a huge impact in the summer on the international stage.