Pass it like Pasha
Basketball star Manroop Clair hopes to follow the path IndoCanadian mentor Pasha Bains tread 20 years ago — and take it a step farther, to the NBA.
The local basketball legend watched intently as a group of adolescent boys ran through a routine layup drill. With his arms folded, in black sweatpants with a matching polo shirt draped over his 6- foot- 5- inch frame, Pasha Bains paced up and down the sidelines hollering out instructions to his young students.
The game is his life, it always has been.
Bains, who is of Indian descent, is known today as the head coach of his Vancouver- based DRIVE Basketball Academy. But growing up in Richmond, it wasn’t coaching he dreamed of doing.
“I wanted to play in the NBA and I thought I could be the first East Indian to make it,” said Bains from the basketball courts inside the Richmond oval.
Fourteen years ago, he was a prep phenom so spectacular, that in 2008,
The Vancouver Sun selected him over Victoria native and Phoenix Suns point guard, Steve Nash, as the province’s best high school basketball player of the 1990s.
“In high school, Pasha was a very tough kid, very skilled and stronger than most athletes at that level,” said Jay Triano, the former Toronto Raptors and Simon Fraser head coach. In the late ’ 90s, Triano was working as a TV commentator for the Grizzlies and briefly coached Bains during a Canadian national team training camp in 2001.
An athletic two- guard with parking lot range, Bains averaged nearly 40 points per game as a senior at Richmond secondary. He attracted coast tocoast interest from college basketball programs across the United States before eventually landing at Clemson, where for two seasons he battled the likes of current NBA players Steve Blake and Chris Duhon.
Bains, now 31, never made the NBA. He was, however, a pioneer of sorts by being one of the first Indo- Canadian basketball players to play for a major Division I program — a feat not lost on the Indian community that accounts for 962,665 people in Canada, according to the 2006 census.
“Pasha playing in an [ Atlantic Coast Conference] school was a huge step forward for us Indians,” said Manroop Clair, 17, from Surrey, one of the largest South Asian communities in Canada. “Looking at what he did, we felt anything was possible.”
If Bains is the original, then Clair might be the sequel. Some 7,000 kilometres away from B. C., in West Virginia, Clair has been chasing a hoop dream of his own. The slim, 6- 2 combo guard has spent the last half- year playing for national powerhouse Huntington Prep — which finished the season as the sixth best high school team in the country, according to USA Today, with a 28- 2 record.
Last week, Clair committed to play at the University of Hawaii this fall.
“Clair is one of the most offensively polished players that Canada has to offer,” said Tariq Sbiet, founder and editor of North Pole Hoops, a Canadianbased basketball recruiting website. Sbiet had Clair ranked as the seventh- best high school prospect in Canada. “He is locked and loaded, never hesitant to shoot.”
In the past 12 months, Clair has transformed himself from a little known Lower Mainland high school star to the Jeremy Lin of Indian basketball players. After his junior year at Burnaby South secondary school in Vancouver, where he averaged 22 points per game, he exploded on the Amateur Athletic Union summer circuit — highlighted by a 27- point performance against Duke recruit Rasheed Sulaimon in Las Vegas.
Clips of Clair knocking down 30- foot three pointers and crossing over opponents started to circulate around Youtube last summer. Fans routinely compare Clair to NBA sharpshooters Stephen Curry or Jimmer Fredette on message boards. ESPN The Magazine even featured him.
His rise to fame comes as no surprise to Bains, who immediately saw something in Clair when they met six years ago at a DRIVE basketball camp.
“I could just tell that there was something about him,” Bains said. “I knew just by the look in his eyes and the way he approached the game that this kid was different than any other kid I’ve ever coached.”
From that day on, Bains took Clair under his wing, working him out for hours after school and every day during the summer. While Clair credits his older brother Swaroop Clair as his biggest influence, Bains is not far behind.
“Pasha’s helped me out so much throughout the years with anything from basketball to school to life in general,” said Clair. The two talk every day via text message or Facebook. “He’s been like a big brother to me, basically.”
After Clair expressed interest in playing his senior year at a high- profile U. S. school, Bains, who’s helped send more than a dozen DRIVE players to Division I schools, made some calls. Clair started the season as the starting shooting guard for La Jolla Prep in California, where he was the team’s
I knew just by the look in his eyes and the way he approached the game that this kid was different than any other kid I’ve ever coached.
PASHA BAINS DRIVE BASKETBALL ACADEMY COACH ON MANROOP CLAIR
leading scorer, but due to financial reasons, he left the team in November and enrolled at Trent Internationale in Texas. During Clair’s brief stint there, he caught the eye of Huntington Prep coach Rob Fulford at a holiday tournament in Illinois. Clair transferred for the third time in a year to Huntington Prep at the beginning of January.
“We needed another ball handler and shooter to fill a void on our team,” said Fulford. “Heard really good things about him and when we played against him, you could tell he was a player.”
Huntington Prep is a program that boasts as many as 10 Division I prospects on its roster, including Andrew Wiggins, another Canadian and the No. 1 prospect of the 2014 class by many scouting services. Clair has been a key contributor off the bench — a role Fulford said he’s flourished in.
“Right now, I can say I’m not the best player on this team,” Clair said. “But by the end of my basketball career, I want to prove I was the best wherever I went.”
Before signing with Hawaii, Clair had received interest from more than two dozen D- I programs, including Rice, New Mexico State, Santa Clara, Weber State and Washington. But as a 6- 2, 170- pound shooting guard, it is evident he will have to bulk up if he is to be a success at the NCAA level.
“He will play Division I basketball, but the level will be determined as to how he develops his game and his body,” said Fulford. “He will need to take the weight room very serious to get there.”
Clair is confident of a lot of things. He is confident he’ll be 195 pounds by the time he steps on Hawaii’s campus. He is confident he’ll make an impact once he’s there. He’s sure he will not only be the first Indian to play in the NBA, but he’ll be a star once he gets there. He wants to do it for his family, for Pasha and for the entire Indian community — especially the one back home in Surrey.
“When I make it to the NBA, everybody from home makes it,” Clair said. “I want to give back.”
Bains, too, hopes Clair can make it to where he couldn’t. As Bains sat with the reporter, he talked about how much farther his own hoops career could have gone if he’d played high school ball in the States or chose a mid- major school verses a fancy ACC school.
He mentioned how much has changed from when he played a generation or two ago. He reminisced about how Indians playing organized ball was rare when he grew up and how today, his DRIVE teams are filled with Indian kids, some of whom have college potential and many of whom wear patkas when they play.
Finally, he talked about Manroop. He pointed out Clair wears the number 33 in honour of him. With a slight hesitation, the legend acknowledged his protégé might be better even than he was.
“They always say the last guy is the best guy,” said Bains. “Manroop respects me and he knows in some ways I’ve paved the way for him. But he’s coming after me, I know that.”
“He’s coming after my legacy and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”