Coach from south has eye on Canada
Tennessee’s Barnes built pipeline of northern talent that has flowed into NBA
The man with the U.S. college hoops pipeline to the north has a voice that is anything but.
It is pure Carolina, syrupy and thick. It is so clearly southern, so distinctive in its twang, there can be no misplacing it from the moment he parts his lips.
This is how you first experience Rick Barnes, the Tennessee men’s basketball coach, through that drawl. That is, if his reputation has not preceded him — 17 years before this season spent at Texas, where his teams reached the NCAA tournament 16 times. But March Madness mainstay though he has been, Barnes, 61, from Hickory, N.C. — a town so named in 1873 because its first tavern had been built underneath a towering hickory tree — has carved for himself another standing in basketball.
The venerable coach, through his own draw and the unrelenting work of his staff, has become a sort of Canadian hoops whisperer, playing a lead role in Canada’s storm on the NBA.
At Texas, Barnes developed a conduit north of the border in a time before Andrew Wiggins, when Canadian basketball players were considered with respect but not revered as must-have prospects. There, Barnes recruited and developed Tristan Thompson, now with the Cavaliers, and Cory Joseph, now with the Raptors.
“When you’re recruiting and wanting to build a program, there’s no borders,” Barnes says. “There really aren’t.”
It was a lesson he learned in what seemed like a lifetime earlier, during the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Barnes was head coach at Providence College in Rhode Island. He would make recruiting trips to Canada in search of talent for the Friars, but it would be some years before those visits produced a fruitful crop.
The coach first became serious with a Canadian recruit when he went hard after Thompson, a Brampton kid that by high school was starring at a number of regarded prep schools in the U.S., including Saint Benedict’s in New Jersey and Findlay Prep near Las Vegas.
Barnes had always been a success- ful coach, but he had risen by then to a certain level of prominence for bringing Kevin Durant all the way from the Washington, D.C., suburbs to Austin for the forward’s lone college season.
Durant had been selected second overall in the 2007 NBA Draft, and was on his way to Rookie of the Year in 2008 when Thompson, still a sophomore in high school, was choosing a program.
He picked Texas, where he would enrol in 2010, and for Barnes, Thompson was the first big Canadian domino to fall. Next on the coach’s northern wish list was Joseph, from Pickering, one of the top point guard prospects of his class.
Joseph was drawn to Texas by several reasons — Thompson’s previous commitment, the atmosphere on campus — but he knew also he had a shot to replicate the career of the school’s point guard he was replacing, Avery Bradley, who spent one year at Texas before being selected in the first round of the NBA draft.
“I felt like I would get an opportunity,” Joseph told the Star’s Chris O’Leary. “All I would have to do was go there and prove myself.”
At Texas, Joseph was the next Canadian in what would become a line of them. A year later to campus came Myck Kabongo, a five-star recruit from Toronto who now plays in the NBA D-League. Beginning with Thompson, each Canadian star Barnes secured helped ease the next prospect’s decision.
“Familiarity is so important when kids are leaving home,” says Bob Lanier, a top Barnes assistant at Texas who followed the coach to Tennessee
“When you’re recruiting and wanting to build a program, there’s no borders.” RICK BARNES COLLEGE BASKETBALL COACH
this year. After Thompson’s commitment, Lanier says, “it made it a different kind of sell to Cory and Myck.”
Barnes refuses tribute for his role in attracting a unique number of top Canadian basketball prospects.
“I don’t want any credit all,” he says, deferring to his staff, including Lanier, who is from Buffalo and has longtime ties to the sport in Canada, and also Rodney Terry, the Fresno State head coach who was a former Barnes assistant and worked to secure Barnes’ first Canadian recruits to Texas.
But there can be no denying the allure Barnes has held among Canadian hoop stars. Of the 12 Canadians in the NBA today, Barnes is the only coach that has developed multiple players. Even among those Canadians, Barnes’ pupils are not simply rank-and-file NBA employees. This off-season, Thompson and Joseph signed contracts totalling $112 million.
Barnes’ connection to Canada has not been disrupted following his move, in March, from Longhorn to Volunteer. In his first recruiting season at Tennessee, the coach secured two top prospects with roots in the GTA, Orangeville Prep forward Kyle Alexander, and Ray Kasongo, another big man born in Montreal, raised in Toronto, and who Barnes brought over to Tennessee after Kasongo spent his freshman year at Southern Idaho.
When Alexander and Kasongo debuted this year, they became the first Canadians to play at Tennessee since Bobby Croft, from Hamilton, who left for Knoxville in 1967 as the first Canadian in history to receive a basketball scholarship from a major U.S. college.
Barnes and his staff have found a profitable relationship with Canadian players, and the coach sees no reason to quit now. “You always want to go where there are great players,” Barnes says. “You can’t help but be always intrigued and excited to go back to recruit an area you’ve had success from.”
Already, a member of Barnes’ staff says, Tennessee has offered a scholarship to another renowned Canadian high school player the team hopes to sign soon as its next recruit.
If the kid plans to one day reach the NBA, he may have as good a shot as any to do so before Barnes, a southern man with the north in his heart. BIOS: Tristan Thompson, forward, Texas (2010-11) College stats: 13.1 ppg, 7.8 rpg. The crown jewel, and debut member, of Barnes’ Canadian finds, Thompson was picked fourth overall in the 2011 NBA Draft. After an exceptional NBA Finals last year with the Cavaliers, Thompson, from Brampton, was rewarded with a monster deal in Cleveland: $82 million over five years. Cory Joseph, guard, Texas (2010-11)
College stats: 10.4 ppg, 1.4 3s per game.
Younger brother of local star Devoe Joseph, Cory grew up in Pickering and played one season at Texas alongside Thompson. Was drafted in 2011 by the Spurs and won a title in San Antonio. In July, Cory was signed by the Raptors to a four-year deal, worth $30 million. Myck Kabongo, guard, Texas (2011-2013) College stats: 12.1 ppg, 5.4 apg. An electric guard at Toronto’s Eastern Commerce, Kabongo was a McDonald’s All-American and fivestar recruit that followed Thompson and Joseph to Texas. His eligibility was compromised for attempting to retain an agent while still in college, and after two seasons he declared for the NBA draft. Kabongo went unselected, and now plays for the Erie Bay-Hawks of the NBA D-League.
Kyle Alexander, forward, Tennessee (2015-present) College stats: 0.7 ppg, 1.9 rpg. From Scarborough, starred at the famous Athlete Institute prep school in Orangeville, the same school that produced guard Jamal Murray (now at Kentucky) and now features Thon Maker, considered by many the next great basketball star from Canada. Alexander’s dad played college ball at Niagara.
Ray Kasongo, forward, Tennessee (2015-present) College stats: 1.3 ppg, 1.3 rpg. Barnes’ first signee when the coach moved from Texas to Tennessee, Kasongo became a Volunteer after spending a year at Southern Idaho. Born in Montreal and raised in Toronto, Kasongo spent his last year before college in Phoenix, at the famed Phase 1 Academy prep school.