Introduction

I wanted to create this blog to share some statistics on Canadian basketball players that played in the NCAA tournament compared to United States players or players from other countries. I also wanted to highlight some of the players that are from Canada that have really impressed not only me, but the rest of the basketball world. This blog is important because it shows that basketball is spreading throughout the world and is giving kids the opportunity to play at the college level or at the professional level. The goal of a sport is to grow as much as it can and I think basketball has grown a lot within the United States. We have AAU basketball circuits now that get national coverage such as the EYBL circuit and we have a National Tournament for the "top" high school teams in the country that get covered on the ESPN family of networks. Now that basketball has grown within the United States, we are reaching out to other countries and allowing them to come and play with our college teams and professional teams.

Canada has really shown their passion for the sport of basketball by having a professional team in Toronto. If you are paying attention to the NBA playoffs right now the Toronto Raptors fans are overflowing that arena. They have so many fans that they put a huge screen outside the arena and they have thousands of fans outside watching and cheering on their team. In my years of watching NBA basketball I cannot remember a time where there were that many people standing outside an arena to cheer their team on in the playoffs. One of the top rappers in the game Drake, actually just recently took part in owning the Toronto Raptors. One of the reasons he did that is because he actually is from Canada and wants to support his country. Drake becoming the owner and the Raptors having a really good year has brought together Canadian fans to cheer on their team.

The goal of these next couple blogs is just to recognize and support the growth of basketball to Canada and even to other countries. Again I feel like this is very important to the sport of basketball because it is giving kids an opportunity to do something positive in life. In the next 10 to 15 years I expect to see more colleges that are talked about that are in Canada and participate in Division 1 athletics. I think it is really fascinating on the number of players recently to have a lot of success in basketball that are from Canada. Hopefully these blogs can create awareness to the movement that is happening and to show that the world is catching up with United States basketball.