Stoudamire fondly looks back at time with Raptors
In the cutthroat world of big time NCAA college basketball, all that recruiters want is an edge, something that gives the slightest advantage over their competitors.
If there’s a steady stream of Toronto talent headed to Arizona in the next little while, it’s because the Wildcats have an edge that beats almost all others.
Damon Stoudamire, recognized Wednesday night by the Raptors to wind up the team’s “celebration” of 20 seasons, isn’t about to get greedy in his current gig as a Wildcat assistant.
“I’m not trying to come to Canada and get all the good players,” he said. “I just want one good player.”
That’s not an outrageous request seeing how Stoudamire is partially responsible for the explosion of basketball in Toronto and across Canada.
He was the first star the team employed 20 years ago, a small lefthanded point guard who became the league’s rookie of the year and a darling to Toronto fans who admired not only his skill but his competitive nature just as much.
Saddled with a group of teammates who were cast off from other teams because of flaws in their games and their characters, Stoudamire almost single-handedly kept the Raptors in some games and helped popularize the game to the point the GTA produced back-to-back No. 1 NBA draft picks.
“The funny thing about it is a lot of the people that oversee the AAU teams that are coming out of here, I knew them when I was here,” he said. “When you’re recruiting the kids, the parents are my age so they know who I am, the kids don’t.”
Stoudamire’s connection with this group of Raptors goes beyond him just being an historical figure for the franchise. He’s been a teammate and a bit of a mentor to current point guard Kyle Lowry.
“Kyle has always been the underdog,” said Stoudamire, the incumbent when Lowry was first drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies.
“He never was respected at high school, he never was respected at college. He gets drafted, I’m there, me and him are kind of splitting minutes and they draft Mike Conley . . . Now you’ve got three point guards and he goes and stews in the corner.
“He’s always had to prove himself and he’s always had to play with a chip on his shoulder. What he’s been doing this season I would say that it’s the same thing, he wanted to prove everybody wrong.”