Canada Basketball eyes Brampton as a hotbed
Rowan Barrett
Photo courtesy Canada Basketball
Rowan Barrett is executive vice president and assistant general manager of men’s high performance for Canada Basketball.
Brampton Guardian
BRAMPTON — The current crop of Canadian men’s basketball players has been called the best this country has ever produced.
And there is no disputing that Brampton has been at the forefront of the rise. With the likes of high NBA draft picks Tristan Thompson and Anthony Bennett, and the likely lottery selection this year of Tyler Ennis, Brampton has produced its fair share of talent.
One of those who expects to reap the benefits of that is Rowan Barrett, executive vice president and assistant general manager of men’s high performance for Canada Basketball. He and Canada Basketball have been keeping a close eye on what has been happening in Brampton. He is pleased to see the emphasis on the early development programs in the club teams in Brampton.
“You’ve got 6-year-olds that are playing in Brampton,” said Barrett. He also cites the growing availability of basketball nets and courts where youngsters now have more opportunity to just go and play.
Thompson opened a lot of eyes to the caliber of basketball in both Canada and Brampton when the Cleveland Cavaliers selected him with the fourth pick of the 2011 draft after a year at the University of Texas. He has continued to show improvement over his three years in Cleveland and was an important part of Canada’s senior men’s team, which came up short in last summer’s qualifier for the 2014 World Cup.
At the time, Thompson was the highest that a Canadian had gone in the NBA draft in the modern era. But that was surpassed last year when Cleveland made Bennett the No. 1 pick out of UNLV.
Three more players from Brampton could also be selected this year: Ennis, a point guard from Syracuse is highly rated, but two others who are on the NBA’s radar for the June 26 draft are Melvin Ejim from Iowa State and Sim Bhullar of New Mexico State. That, plus the excitement created by the NBA Raptors this season, has given young basketball players plenty of role models.
“Tristan Thompson and Anthony Bennett grew up watching Vince Carter and the Raptors,” said Barrett. “I can’t even image where we are going to be 10 years from now.”
And he is well aware there are good young prospects coming up.
“We have players that are 13 and 6-8 in Brampton,” he said.
Barrett would not offer a guess as to how high any of the Canadian players might go in the draft but is hoping they will end up somewhere where they can continue to develop.
A key to get Canada an improved showing on the world stage is to get top players playing together and gaining international experience. Canada missed qualifying for this year’s World Cup in Spain so the next step is to try and qualify for the 2016 Olympics.
Barrett said that Canada is not like the United States, which has plenty of NBA players to choose from, so it is important that Canada’s best players are with the national program.
Last summer Thompson played for the national team but Bennett was unable to because he was recovering from surgery. Ennis was with the junior national team, and was the leading scorer at the Worlds, as Canada finished sixth. Ejim played for the World University Games team. Bhullar and Bennett have both played for national age-group teams.
Barrett is hoping to give the top Canadians the opportunity to play against the world’s best at the senior level to get a taste of what that is like. Even though Canada is not going to the men’s World Cup, Canada Basketball recently announced a schedule of 11 exhibition games in Europe.
Team Canada will have a training camp at the Air Canada Centre from July 22-29 and go to Europe from July 24 to Aug. 12. During that 11-game swing Canada has games against five of the top nations in the world, No. 2 Spain, No. 7 Turkey, No. 11 Serbia, No. 13 Slovenia and No. 15 Angola.
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