This season, not a single member of the Raptors are from Canada. In fact, the team has had only 1 player of Canadian decent on their teams history, according to Real GM, and that player is Jamaal Magloire, who only played 1 season with the team and is now an Assistant Coach.
There is a little sense of pride from the Toronto Raptors and their fans, a small ‘us against the NBA’ mentality that the Raptors and their fans might take against the NBA. Despite the fact that the All-Star game is going to Toronto next year, the Raptors seem to be always left out of the NBA picture, in part due to their relative mediocrity in the last 20 years.
Now it seems like they want to take all their Canadian talent and keep it away from the rest of the NBA. Ujiri hints that he might just start off with a budding young superstar, Andrew Wiggins, but says it with out getting in any kind of trouble for tampering.
Following from Ryan Wolstat of the Toronto Sun who quoted Ujiri as a part of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport’s Canadian Basketball Speakers forum.
“We are an NBA team, it’s important we look for talent everywhere, but it is on our minds to get a Canadian player or Canadian players,” Ujiri said at Ryerson’s Mattamy Athletic Centre, after he had delivered his address…
“We are studying it. I even considered last year hiring somebody to concentrate just on Canadian players and I think I’m going to go through with it because the growth of the game here is so big,” he said.
“It’s the fit. We can maybe take our time and study it a little bit so it is the right fit and not do it just to do it. It’s going to come, there is no doubt in my mind. It’s an obligation that I think we have to fulfil. We are a Canadian team and I think to have Canadian players, I think will be phenomenal.”
More from Lori Ewing of The Star.com.
When asked if there was one player he’d love to see in Toronto — and taking LeBron James off the table — Ujiri left little doubt that it’s Wiggins, the budding superstar from Vaughan, Ont.
“We all know who he is, I’m not even going to say his name,” Ujiri said — more cheers from the crowd.
In case there was any doubt, he added: “He might be Canadian.”
Wiggins is on the steadfast path to winning the NBA’s Rookie of the Year award and his development is one of the best stories of the season. He obviously grew up watching the Raptors as well as the Vancouver Grizzlies and that might be a driving force behind Wiggins playing basketball at a young age. In fact, it might be a driving force for a bunch of the young NBA players from Canada like Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, Kelly Olynyk, Andrew Nicholson, Nik Stauskas and Tyler Ennis. You can understand why Ujiri might want any one of these young players as they all bring some solid talent to the table.
Either way, getting Wiggins to Toronto might mean they let go of a guy like DeMar Derozan plus another asset but, when it’s all said and done, would Raptors fans be upset about that? I don’t think so.
