Basketball: Grunwald pushes for a national training centre
When Glen Grunwald arrived in Toronto as the second in command with the Raptors in the mid-1990s, the NBA team practised in a cramped university facility in the middle of the city and had to be off the court each day just after noon so the intramural volleyball program could start its day.
The Canadian national teams were housed in dorms at Humber College, single beds in tiny rooms without air conditioning and facilities that were, in many ways, an embarrassment.
The former general manager of the Raptors and New York Knicks, the former president of the Toronto board of trade and athletic director at McMaster University, a passionate Canadian who has helped put Canada Basketball on solid financial footing, Grunwald is stepping down as president and CEO of the national organization and will move into a consultant’s role with one goal in mind: Get a national training centre built that will allow the game to continue its growth and keep producing world-class talent.
It’s a logical next step, one that Canadian basketball lacks and that other sports have. As the 63-year-old Grunwald steps back a bit, it has become his passion.
“We’ve got a publicly funded velodrome in Milton that’s developed into Olympic medals and a lot of people getting turned onto cycling, which is great, but we have more people playing basketball than ever and we have less facilities available than ever,” he said over a Zoom call Wednesday. “We have fewer schools available than ever for rentals, and we don’t have one of these facilities. And it’s been proven that it matters and every good player, every serious player in Canada, should come through this facility.
“There’ll be a Hall of Fame in there where they can understand and appreciate what the histories and traditions and heritage of Canada Basketball are and they need to walk through and see that. The national championships that we hold around the country every year, every player playing for a provincial team should come through that facility and see what’s going on and be proud about it. And I think it would add so much to our sport and to our country in terms of bringing people together and bringing communities together.”
Grunwald said land has been donated in Hamilton for the facility and political support is there. He’s seen money spent on facilities for other sports and knows basketball deserves its share.
“There’s been over 7,000 publicly-funded ice arenas in this country; there hasn’t been any basketball facilities funded in this country,” he said. “And unlike other countries that are world class, in terms of their performance internationally, we don’t have a national training centre — Australia, France, U.S., you can go through the list there.
“Other (sports) have national training centres and we saw (the value in) that in the Olympics when the cycling team won a gold medal, thanks to the velodrome out in Milton. So I am trying to get this done.”
Michael Bartlett, a well-respected executive who left Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment to join Canada Basketball as the chief operating officer this year, will assume the CEO’s role from Grunwald.
The program is coming off a disappointing season in which the senior men’s team failed to qualify for the Olympics and the senior women’s team failed to make it to the quarterfinals for the first time since 2008.
Canada Basketball’s success will be tied to winning, — in Olympic and World Cup competitions — but it will also be tied to becoming an organization that deep-pocketed sponsors want to be associated with.
“It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario,” Bartlett said. “We have to be out talking to partners about the opportunity for them to invest in our future performance. I think we get caught in a bit of a narrow gaze in looking at our performance metrics as just Olympics only.
“We did not achieve what we wanted to do. We did not qualify on the men’s side. We did not medal on the women’s side. We should be medalling in men’s and women’s Olympic competition.”