By: Dave Feschuk Sports Columnist, Published on Thu Mar 19 2015

That this country’s basketball future seems bright is a point being made and remade almost daily. Andrew Wiggins, the No. 1 NBA draft pick and likely rookie of the year, made his Canadian-soil debut as a pro on Wednesday night at the Air Canada Centre, this in the same week the NCAA Tournament tipped off with something like 28 Canadians dotting rosters.

Given the volume of the fervour it’d be easy enough to assume that the game only found its legs around here recently. But as Anthony Bennett, another NBA No. 1 from the GTA, was pointing out the other day: “There’s always been good players here.”

He’s right. Canada’s history in the game is long and proud. So it’s sad that in some ways, in some eyes, a lot of it has been largely lost or, at least, misplaced.

In co-founding an organization for alumni of Canada’s national basketball teams, long-time elite player David Turcotte spent part of the past year engaged in a project. The idea, to begin, was to document every hoopster who ever suited up for Canada’s men’s and women’s teams. No elaborate bio was being sought. Just a name and a photograph of the player in a uniform bearing a Maple Leaf.

If it seemed simple enough, it turned out to be a painstaking exercise that’s still not completed. Living in a time in which games at every level are captured for posterity with digital ease, it’s easy to forget that photos and videos weren’t nearly so ubiquitous even a short time ago. To that end, the alumni association has found it difficult to unearth photographs of members of relatively recent vintage.

Turcotte said Phil Dixon, the Toronto high school legend who played for the national team in 1995, doesn’t own a photo of himself in a Team Canada uniform. Ditto Norm Clarke, the Oakwood Collegiate stalwart who was a fixture on the team in the 1980s.

“Not one picture,” said Turcotte. “Barry Mungar (a fourth-round NBA draft pick in 1986). Not one picture. Dwight Walton (who played on the 1988 Olympic team) — he doesn’t have any pictures of himself playing on the team. Nobody does. It’s crazy that Canada Basketball (the sport’s national governing body) doesn’t have ’em either.”

The sport, said Paul Thomas, coach of Canada’s 1952 men’s Olympic team, has been under-documented. Few know that Canada’s only Olympic basketball medal — a silver — was won in 1936, or that, while this generation of players is being heralded as a golden one, it was a mid-1980s collection of talent led by Jay Triano that beat a U.S. team featuring Charles Barkley and Karl Malone.

A few years back Dan Meagher, the former captain of the Duke University Blue Devils who played for that Canadian team, told a reporter he’d been searching unsuccessfully for video of that feat.

“There really aren’t very good records out there,” Paul Thomas said.

Turcotte, a Sudbury native who played for the national team for most of 15 years and was a four-year starter at Colorado State University in the 1980s, is a lawyer and a successful tech entrepreneur who now resides in Park City, Utah. He founded the alumni association with Howard Kelsey, another longtime member of the national team who recently did a stint as a Canada Basketball executive. Misty Thomas, a linchpin on the women’s national team that won bronze at the 1986 world championships, is also lending assistance.

Along with attempting to better curate the history of Canada’s squads on the world stage, the group hopes to better connect those who created it. Turcotte said there is currently very little official contact between former members of national teams. He calls it “a massive grassroots support network” that has largely gone untapped. Thomas, who has also worked with the national women’s soccer team, said the lack of alumni activity isn’t the sole domain of roundball.

“Most sports could do a better job of keeping the alumni engaged,” she said.

The aim of strengthening ties among Canada’s roundballers is multi-faceted. There’s a feeling that elder alums could be of service to their younger counterparts, either for advice on the game or — more to the point — on post-athletic-career matters.

Turcotte said he owes much to the mentorship of various teammates through the years. By way of example he cited Eli Pasquale, the long-time national team point guard a few years his senior, for setting him straight on one ill-advised, beer-fueled night of partying during his high-school days in Sudbury.

“(Pasquale) just walked up to me and said, ‘You’re being an idiot,’ ” Turcotte said. “I don’t think I touched a beer for two years.”

And Turcotte counted national-team alum Karl Tilleman as a huge influence during his time juggling law school with elite sport. Tilleman, who also became a lawyer in his post-basketball days and clerked in the U.S. Supreme Court, helped Turcotte navigate those stresses: “He found me people who taught me how to study for law school — it was huge.”

The hope is that the alumni association can help foster mutually beneficial relationships among its membership. Turcotte said he knows of ex-players in financial distress who could use, say, a job opportunity. And while the superstar likes of Wiggins and Steve Nash won’t likely be in need of an entry-level gig anytime soon, the vast majority of the hundreds of Canadians flooding NCAA rosters will never play for mega-dollars.

“Knowing there’s a support group of people who care about you being successful — as a player that’s a huge thing,” Turcotte said.

Beyond that, there are plans to help make Canada’s basketball Hall of Fame, currently of no fixed address, a destination worthy of a visit. The search continues to fill out the photographic archive. (The alumni association’s web site can be found here.)

“It’s important for people to know that Canada’s basketball history doesn’t go, ‘We were nothing, and then there was Steve Nash,’ ” Turcotte said.

“But that’s what a lot of people think.”

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