Edey extends amazing run for Ontario basketball
There has never been 12 months like these — not for Canadian basketball.
Not before.
Not with this kind of success. In just one calendar year, the angry Toronto giant, Zach Edey, has won NCAA men's basketball player of the year, will likely win another one, and has followed it up by bullying his way through the tournament best known as March Madness.
All that has come in addition to the Canadian men's and women's teams qualifying for the Summer Olympics; Kitchener, Ont.'s Jamal Murray playing an enormous role in the NBA championship win by the Denver Nuggets; and Hamilton's Shai Gilgeous-alexander being named Canadian male athlete of the year, an NBA all-star and now being discussed regularly as a most valuable player candidate in the NBA.
Any of those, by themselves, is a lot to process. But all of them — in this relatively short time — is partly breathtaking and certainly unexpected.
Edey was not like NBA player Andrew Wiggins of Thornhill, Ont., growing up. He wasn't a natural. He wasn't the kid who was going to change franchises.
We didn't start hearing about him when he was a kid. He played hockey at Hillcrest and baseball at Leaside and was doing what so many Toronto kids do in the winters and in the summers here. He came to basketball because of his height, unnaturally because he came to it so late.
Though you wouldn't know it now by watching his dominance.
He's played four games for Purdue as they head to this weekend's Final Four. All he's done in the four wins was score 120 points, pull down 65 rebounds, and dominate the opposition.
Purdue plays North Carolina State on Saturday night. If it wins that game, it will be on to the championship game Monday night. Only five Canadians have won NCAA championships.
None of them carried their teams the way the 7-foot-4 Edey has carried Purdue.
Just like no one has done what Gilgeous-alexander has managed this season and last in Oklahoma City. Not even Steve Nash, who won two MVPS.
Gilgeous-alexander is scoring 30.3 points a game for Okie City, his second straight season above 30 a game. The Thunder have the third-best record in the NBA, just a game behind the defending champion Nuggets. All this coming after Gilgeous-alexander was the key player last summer in Canada's men's team qualifying for the Olympics.
And with this summer still to come.
If healthy, Murray and Gilgeous-alexander should team together to provide Team Canada with the best backcourt at the Olympics. But before them, Murray and the Nuggets will begin defence of their title later this month.
Great as Nikola Jokic is — and he might be the best basketball player on the planet — he doesn't win the NBA on his own. The Nuggets needed a second scoring option — one who changes games — and Murray played that part in last year's playoffs.
The hope in Denver is he'll do that again this playoff season.
Because he's young and rather inexperienced at the highest level, it's hard to know how much Edey will play for Canada. But he should play for Canada in Paris, along with Murray, along with Gilgeous-alexander, along with the tenacious defender, Dillon Brooks of Mississauga, Ont.
All these players aren't just from Canada. They're all Ontario kids. They all learned the game here. The same place Mississauga's R.J. Barrett learned to play. The same place Brooks and Wiggins learned to play.
They learned to play when Connor Mcdavid and Mitch Marner were learning to master hockey and the Naylor brothers and Jordan Romano were finding out about baseball and Nathan Rourke was throwing footballs.
A province now so deep in sporting talent.
Nash used to be by himself when it came to special Canadian players in basketball. He learned his basketball in British Columbia. He was a one-man show, later an icon, certainly a Canadian outlier.
Time has changed all that. This city, this province, continues to produce basketball players who are changing the sport. Edey, the dominant figure in college basketball. Gilgeous-alexander, one of the dominant figures in the NBA. Murray a huge contributor to the Nuggets.
Oh Canada. Oh Ontario. How do we explain all this basketball wealth?