Sport development: How Canadian basketball took a major step forward

Łukasz Muniowski
University of Szczecin, Poland

Up until the second part of the 2010s Canadian basketball was associated with one name: Steve Nash. The two-time MVP point guard was a quintessentially team-first player and his focus on highlighting others on the court was awarded with individual NBA awards. His professional career seems to overshadow his contributions on the international stage. Nash remains the most-capped Canadian basketball player of all time with 74 games played with a maple leaf jersey. Nash infamously never won an NBA championship and international glory seemed to elude him as well, as even at his best showing, in the 1999 Tournament of the Americas, the Canadians lost to the Americans in the final, despite Nash’s MVP campaign.

The centrality of Nash for Canada basketball stretched beyond his playing career, as he not only convinced fellow citizens that they could make a name for themselves in the best basketball league in the world, but also used his name recognition to provide the conditions and the facilities for them to reach their true potential. This is not to belittle how Vince Carter put the Toronto Raptors on the map with his explosive dunks that made Raptors’ games must-see TV for sports fans. The eight-time All-Star got his number retired by the Raptors and the Nets, and his departure from the former to the latter led to him being booed by Canadian fans for over a decade. It seems that the Raptors have a problem with keeping their superstars, as even an NBA Championship could not keep Kawhi Leonard in this beautiful, cosmopolitan city, as he left for his hometown of Los Angeles in 2019.

The key was to reorganize the way Canadians groomed their future athletes, with most of the players for the national team coming from the West Coast, despite places like Toronto and Montreal becoming hotbeds of talented players.

Weisfeld’s story however does not open with Nash or Carter, but with Italian Maurizio Gherardini, at the time assistant manager of the Toronto Raptors, who had various ideas on how to fix the sport in his country of employment. He summed them up in one word: “Revolution”. Writing it down on a whiteboard in 2007 ignited an almost 20-year rehaul of the whole organization, which at the moment was $1.3 million in debt. The process was filled with ups and downs since, as the author puts it “inspiration is one thing, and development is another” (p. 3). The key was to reorganize the way Canadians groomed their future athletes, with most of the players for the national team coming from the West Coast, despite places like Toronto and Montreal becoming hotbeds of talented players. As these were primarily children of immigrants from the West Indies, they fell victim to the (supposed) racial bias that for years plagued the sport in Canada.

In Weisfeld’s book a different bias is at play – he has so bought into Nash’s team-first mentality that he simply mentions controversial issues instead of diving deep into them. Such is the case with the scandal that broke out in 1994, when “two of the best players in the country” (p. 23), Cordell Llewellyn and Wayne Yearwood, were cut from the roster ahead of the 1994 World Championships. Both players were Black and they blamed the decision on systemic racism, while the coaching staff claimed they were not a good fit for the rest of the roster. Weisfeld devotes less than two pages to the story, treating the report on the case, which found “race played no role in the selection of Canada’s national team” (p. 24) as sufficient explanation of the issue and a fitting ending. While his actions are understandable, as the journalist has to sustain good relations with the organization and the players, the ease with which he moves on is not. Later he acknowledges that “Black players had to work twice as hard to get half as far when it came to the men’s basketball team” (p. 34), but the statement falls somewhat flat in a narrative filled with universal praise, respect and understanding. Even in the case of divisive players like Dillon Brooks, the author seems to be on his side, presenting him as scapegoated by the Memphis Grizzlies, overlooking the negative attention he brought to the team, which eventually decided to not renew his deal.

While the book is not academic, it is a vital contribution to the deeper understanding of the shift in world basketball. Americans are still the team to beat and every international championship as theirs to lose, but other federations are in hot pursuit. With “700 officially registered clubs and 100,000 registered participants across the country” (p. 3), Canada is one of them. Weisfeld stresses the importance of star players buying-in for that development, as Nash did in the past and 2025 NBA MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander did when he decided to join the program, next to Andrew Wiggins, RJ Barrett and Jamal Murray. Preferential treatment of NBA players was not beneficial for the program, so imposing certain restrictions on them, holding them accountable, and forcing them to devote time and effort to building chemistry, helped the national team advance. Weisfeld does a great job in honoring the players who led Canadian basketball to where it is today and deepens the understanding of what it takes for a country’s federation to ascend to where it aims to be.

Copyright © Łukasz Muniowski 2026