Jul.29 at 1:14 pm

Kyle says:
About time. well said, Graham. FIBA needs to understand this too, and hopefully, someone there will read this e-mail of yours.

Jul.29 at 1:45 pm

Wayne says:
I can’t believe FIBA is excluding Canada from the tournament. Canadian influence in basketball is currently at an all-time high, not to mention it was a Canadian that invented the game.
Hockey may be the most popular sport in Canada at the moment, but ask anybody in the 18-24 year demographic, and they’ll tell you they watch ball.
We definitely warrant a Wild-Card invite, even if Basketball Canada messed everything up when they fired Jay Triano thus alienating the greatest canadian player ever (nash).
SCREW YOU FIBA….i’d rather watch NBA or NCAA anyways

Jul.29 at 2:07 pm

Hype says:
Woah… what did Montreal do to you to make you have to compare us to Puerto Rico? Just kiddin’ Graham! Great write up and I pretty much agree completely. We should at least ‘always’ be there. The talent up here is getting better and better and I always recognize one or two ballers getting recruited to big NCAA teams now and again (most of them from Montreal actually.. yes, I’m biased..)

Jul.29 at 3:32 pm

allclear55 says:
Wow Graham, you took the words out of my mouth. I couldn’t agree more with everything in this letter. When I saw the dismisal in the Wild Cards, and the win against Germany I just had to feel sorry for Team Canada.

Jul.29 at 4:10 pm

hadoken says:
I don’t really know nothing about the Canadian basketball national team, but I know one thing. This whole wild-card system suck. It’s time for the FIBA to make a better qualifying system. There is a good example: FIFA. If you win your qualifying matches and collect enough points, you can go to the World Cup, if you don’t you can watch the games at home. This is how Trinidad&Tobago managed to qualify to Germany 2006. And they are not a football (soccer) empire.

Jul.29 at 4:53 pm

Roberto (Rome) says:
While I might agree with Graham that the Wild Card system sucks (big time cause, using a clichéd but nonetheless always valid sentence, “it’s all politics”), I find his opinions about canadian basketball slightly biased; yeah, I know about back-to-back MVP Steve Nash and I don’t doubt about the big passion Canadians have for basketball but you cannot blame the whole “world championship” system; once you put the world “global” into it, you have to save 3 or 4 spots for teams hailing from other continents, albeit unfair to other teams which might not make the cut in more competitive continents (such as America and Europe). Yes, we could argue about the number of seeds every continent is granted, but then again, I must disagree on your suggestion of dividing America in two separate areas (Northern and Central, Southern): if you look closely, 5 teams out of 10 are qualified from the American area, and another one has been granted a wild-card, so I wouldn’t call the seeding system unfair, either.
As far as the wild-cards are concerned: Turkey and Serbia & Montenegro are two of the most basketball oriented countries in whole Europe, perhaps the only two european countries where B-ball has a larger following than football; Italy was the silver medalist at the last olympics and Puerto Rico too had a good run in Sidney…yeah, you could debate wheter one of those teams is actually better than Team Canada, but then again, when you finish 9th in your own qualifying area, I guess you don’t give much to think about to the comitee in charge of deciding who should get the wild-card.

Jul.29 at 5:20 pm

Homie says:
If we can’t beat out the likes of the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Venezuela in qualifying, then we don’t deserve to be there. End of story. Wildcards are a dumb idea, I agree, but you shouldn’t be expecting them. See you at Dolphin, Graham. Go Monkeys.

Jul.29 at 5:45 pm

Josh says:
I completely agree with you graham. I’m a Canadian and i know we have a growing basketball program. I can’t wait until players like Junior Cadogan start playing.

Jul.29 at 5:52 pm

Cairo says:
My man… 100% right

Jul.29 at 5:53 pm

name says:
the only time dolphin’s full is during the tourny, which is goin on as we speak…. sunday should kick ass, cuz im too busy saturday/friday…..R.I.P the Beer Garden who’s playin this year? jamal crawford, brandon roy, king handles, pasha bains… any other recorgnizable names?

Jul.29 at 6:03 pm

John says:
Agreed. I’m from Toronto, well Oakville actually for those who live here. It is considered a hockey crazy town. Well the basketball courts here are packed. We could be in Slam’s friekin “The City Game”. Ok maybe not. But theres more to add to Graham’s post. Mainly it’s the government. They don’t do shit here for Canadian athletes who go to college. No athletic scholarships. It’s not legal here. So the broke kid with decent grades who plays ball, can’t go to college or university here because he can’t afford it. So they never get the chance to develop their skills. Also, the size of the basketball stadiums in Canadian universities are pathetic. They’re the same as highschool gyms almost. What does this show about the universities’ thoughts of basketball. The hockey arenas can seat a good 5000 or more. But not basketball. I’ll tell you this. Basketball is rapidly becoming the most popular sport in Canada. I’m looking forward to the day it surpasses hockey.

Jul.29 at 9:06 pm

Josh says:
John, thats exactely what i’m thinking. I used to play hockey in ontario, but i got sick of it. Plus, there way much hype (and im from a small town!)

Jul.29 at 10:22 pm

Waxtron says:
I don’t have much to add, as I agree with you completely. Very well put also.

Jul.30 at 6:42 am

patrick says:
brandon roy is playing at dolphin park?!? video, please.

Jul.30 at 10:24 am

Muraya says:
Canada deserves to be IN, Croatia too. Unfortunately our teams don’t function as well as our players do, with many of them playing in NBA; maybee we need to find some new people for organizational issues/coaching stuff…In Canada’s case I know MVP will take care of that one day…

Jul.30 at 2:11 pm

Nick says:
Graham, Liked what you said and I thought I’d comment. I kinda agree with Pablo in that I don’t think you fully considered basketball on the global stage. Italy was second at the olympics in ‘04 and S&M and Turkey are good examples of coutries where basketball plays a much more prominant role.
I think all that is needed is patience. I agree with you that we can field a squad that can compete with the best in the world but in the last few international competitions Canada has failed to perform. 9th at the tournament of the Americas? Really our best performance of recent memory was 7th in Sydney, which I don’t believe makes us any kind of basketball power. What is interesting is that yeah, Canada knocked off a Nowitzki led German team last week but they lost the 3 games prior to that (one of them to Italy). We’re a young team with a new coach and if given time we’ll make an appearance on the world stage. Our U21 team was 3rd at the Worlds last year knocking off a U.S. team featuring both JJ Reddick and Rudy Gay and quickly enough we are adding a greater depth of talent to build our national team from.
Its not our time yet but trust me it will be soon enough.

Jul.30 at 4:50 pm

Mark T says:
To the clown who said basketball is going to surpass hockey as Canada’s most popular sport…keep dreaming buddy. You think out whopping one (perennial lottery) NBA franchise is going to turn fans off a sport that has seen a home grown team advance to the finals in each of the last two seasons. Theres NHL teams in most big Canadian cities. Why would people stop attending those games to watch the Raptors on TV? And add to that the fact that more than 60% of the NHL is Canadian, while theres been a total of about 10 Canadians in the NBA, and you have assurance that basketball will NEVER in our lifetime be more popular than hockey in Canada. Despite that though…the qualifying for the world championships is bogus, and the wild cards are even worse. Candian basketball is very much on the uprise, and has taken a firm hold as the second most popular sport in the country. However, before we all get excited about the W over Germany, keep in mind that the team lost three in a row to Italy right before.

Jul.30 at 10:42 pm

JB21 says:
Basketball will not pass Hockey as Canada’s most popular sport anytime soon, you are right. But Basketball is growing rapidly, and obviously starting at a lower base, more rapidly than Hockey. As the NCAA, and NBA are more exposed to Canadians more Canadians will play the game. When I was younger (before the Raptors) I can remember only getting NBA Games on Thursday’s on TBS, and then the NBA Sunday games (NBA Bring them back!! ABC you are disrespecting the game) These days if you have all of the Rogers Sportsnet’s and Raptors TV you get a couple games per night … and the NCAA coverage is expanding as well, this past season the large Conference Finals were on, as well as every Tourny game. It’s only going to grow from here, players are getting better and better each year. It’s only a matter of time before Canada is legit at Ball.

Jul.30 at 11:00 pm

TC says:
Canadian hoop fans had it bad. The Grizz can’t stay in Vancouver. Raptors saw stars like Tmac and VC walked away and got nothing back in return. Our national team never got any respect in the international scene. Sigh~! I hope Steve Nash leads the Suns to a 60 win season and wins his 3rd MVP award next year.

Jul.31 at 12:51 am

Chris O'Leary says:
Graham, I feel your pain, man. As much as I’d love to see Canada’s team in the World’s, I think it might be a while before we’ve got a team that’s good enough to qualify for that or the Olympics. I mean, if we had all of our best players (Nash, Magloire, maybe T-Mac Canada, me, etc) right now, I think we definitely would have qualified, but it seems like that’s not the case. I think our best chance is in the future senior national team. If we can keep players like Carl English and Denham Brown involved as their pro careers unfold, then add in kids like Junior Cadougan, Olu Ashaolu and Rob Sacre, we’ll have a nice squad that should be able to qualify on the regular. Also, I know Nash has said his days are done with the national team, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he came back to coach it after he’s done in the NBA. I was at a press conference in Vancity last weekend for Nash’s charity game. I asked him if he’d ever play again. Here’s what he said: “[I’m] pretty much done. You never want to say never, but it’d be a very, very unique set of circumstances if I came back again. I’m getting older and the responsibility I have for my club team is great and it’s difficult to assume that responsibility physically and mentally and if I were to play on the national team, not only would I have to compete for the team, but I’d have to train to get myself into midseason form, which takes a while, believe it or not, for me and it’d probably be too much for me and I wouldn’t be very good for either.” I don’t know, I got the feeling that coaching might be that unique set of circumstances at some point down the road. Maybe as a player/coach?

Jul.31 at 1:59 pm

Jordan says:
Add me to the list of aggreived Canadians. Also, add me to the list of Canadian boys raised on hockey who, while still following the Holy sport in Canada, consider themselves a basketball fan first and a hockey fan second. And no, it wasn’t VC who made me a basketball fan, it was the game itself, spending hot summers (yes, we have them up here, on ashphalt courts or watching the battlegrounds events at the CNE. While I’ll always love the Raptors, it was when I was working for a Toronto newspaper and wrote about Vidal Massiah (Battlegrounds champ two years ago and a local boy) and his tryout for the national junior team, that I really fell for hoops. I spent a couple of days watching Jay Triano run practice for these kids, starting at 7 am and running two-a-day for two weeks in blistering heat that I realized some people in Canada have as much passion for the game as for hockey. I could go on and mention, as many have done, that ball was inevnted by a Canadian, Steve Nash, Leo Rautins, Raptors attendence during dismal seasons, etc., etc., but I shouldn’t have to. If FIBA truly wants to grow the game internationally, they should be inviting countries JUST LIKE US, where basketball is quickly gaining solid footholds in small communities. Countries where interest is growing and the quality of national players are improving. That’s the way to grow the game, not by inviting as many countries from different areas of the world as possible (regardless, nearly, of international team rankings) in some misguided effort to prove that the game is truly international … because after all, they have Australia, Turkey, Serbia-Montenegro, etc. all present. F– that. Grow the game. Include Canada. Rant over.

Jul.31 at 2:03 pm

Pablo Favarel (Argentina) says:
I agree with Graham about the seeding sistem. There´s no doubt it sucks, and even though it might not be a good idea to divide America in verious different zones, I guess that the wild card gotta be erased.
I dunno how the situation about ice hockey it´s up there, but everybody knows that my country is soccer-crazy. Well, that didn´t stop us from winning the gold and the silver (after being STOLEN from greek referee Pitzilkas, yup, we still remember that game) in ´02.
But, after everything is said and done, being the country that created the game, who´s got the two time MVP and an NBA franchise, there´s absolutely NO excuses to finishing next to last in the qualifying. By the way, ice hockey suck! How in the world people can be hooked with it? There´s no need to tell that in Argentina almost the whole nation doesn´t even know that game exists. P.S.: GO ARGENTINA ON JAPAN! BRING ON THE GOLD!

Jul.31 at 5:00 pm

Chris Clarke says:
I don’t see hockey getting surpassed by basketball here in Canada very soon, but basketball is right up there with soccer as the worlds most popular, and you can’t argue that more kids are playing organized soccer than hockey in Canada (hockey is too expensive for most people) but hockey is still our M.O. Hockey will only fall in popularity over the years because our country’s dominance at the sport ended years ago. Um, Canada might deserve a better chance at making the Worlds but they certainly didn’t qualify for them, or the Olympics, recently. I hope things change for FIBA, but the state of basketball in Canada is enough to make Jamal Magloire upset, which is saying something coming from a guy who doesn’t have to worry about that sort of stuff. This country needs to get its sports together in general; basketball is just one sport that is underfunded across the board.

Aug.5 at 1:28 am

Lindsey Hobson says:
I THINK THE CANADIAN GOVERNMENT SHOULD BE MORE INVOLVED WITH ALL SPORTS IN THIS COUNTRY(WITH THE EXCEPTION OF HOCKEY BECAUSE WE DONT NEED HELP IN THAT GAME)MORE FUNDING FOR SCHOLARSHIPS AND MONEY TO DEVELOP AND REGONIZE YOUNG BALLERS WITH THE POTENTIAL DO MAKE SOMETHING OUT OF THIS SPORT IF WE DO THIS CANADA WILL BE UP THERE WITH THE U S AND ARGENTINA

Aug.7 at 1:31 pm

Sean (San Fran) says:
Graham - Well written my man. As a Nova Scotian who now lives south of the border, and follows all facets of the game - I commend you for writing this. In fact, I sent it to about a dozen other Canadian friends who are as fanatical about the game as all of the other SLAM readers are. The two quotes you wrote below express my exact sentiments: “Break it up, none of this Americas buisness, its bizarre, especially when you consider that Oceania gets two seeds, and they only have TWO TEAMS in their whole damn qualifying tournament.” “As for importance of Canada to FIBA. Let’s see, not to mention we have a domestically based franchise in the best league in the world, a vibrant university basketball scene, and that the two-time NBA MVP is from this side of the 49th parallel, there are 30 plus million people in the country. Lots of corporate money floating around, sponsorships, etc. Puerto Rico has a population of 3 and a half million people. thats the size of Montreal.” Understanding exactly how to get FIBA to recognize Canada’s commitment to the game I guess is the ultimate question. Like seriously, what more do we have to do? I wonder what Dr. James Naismith would have to say about this…

Aug.7 at 2:03 pm

Sean (San Fran) says:
I would be remiss not to mention Levon Kendall as another one of our up and coming talented national team players! He dropped 30-something on the USA U-21 team the other summer to pull out a win for Canada (the same game an earlier poster in this thread commented on).

Aug.12 at 10:01 am

Dom Farucia says:
Graham says
“Puerto Rico has a population of 3 and a half million people. thats the size of Montreal. I find it hard to believe that Puerto Rico or Turkey for that matter are potential gold mines for FIBA to tap into.” I say
“Hmmm, Turkey’s population = 2.5 x Canada’s”

Aug.20 at 11:35 pm

Taylor Allen says:
I think we need more teams in Canada. Not necessarily in the NBA but maybe in the ABA or some other league. Hell maybe start are own league. If we really want basketball to get big we will expand the game out of Toronto. I’m from Winnipeg and basketball is becoming bigger by the second here. But there really is nothing we can go see. Sure we can go see the Winnipeg Wesmen or Manitoba Bisons but Canadian College Ball is about as good as American High School Ball. p.s CARL ENGLISH GET YOUR ASS IN THE NBA

Oct.13 at 9:15 pm

aiden says:
Genius, Brilliance!

Oct.15 at 11:46 pm

jrok says:
for the guy that said that said that theres no athletic scholarships from canadian universitys, you dont kno wat your talking about. by definetioin the scholarship cant be for strictly athletics but u just have to have ok grades, most teams have 3 or more kids with scolarships on their teams and this guy that just said candian college ball is about as good as american high school ball i hope ur not trying to talk about cis or any of those leagues because ubc has been beating tones of ncaa teams and theres a possibility that they might be put in the ncaa

Mar.8 at 2:34 pm

MattS says:
good job Graham. now if someone had that kind of heart for Canadian rugby.

Aug.9 at 12:46 pm

Jess says:
Well said Graham…I agree with everything except thae fact that you just said the Atlantic division Champs sucked last season…come on they improved by 20 wins an that is considered to be “stinking”..other than that everything about Canada and the worlds is true…ridiculous

Nov.21 at 10:18 pm

Harry Craig says:
Heavy what are you doing on a basketball site. Don’t tell me you’re a hoopster as well as an OUA all-star in rugby.