Game Time in Canada: An Inside Look at the NBL

It’s almost game time at the GM Centre in Oshawa. Downtown, in the shadow of the car factories to the south and the university at the north, is a changing place. The city invested heavily in revitalizing the downtown and it doesn’t look much like the place I left in the spring of 2009.

The Regent Theatre’s open again. UOIT has a downtown campus. There’s coffee stores and nightclubs. And, right in the heart of downtown, on Athol, is the GM Centre where I’m about to get my first taste of the upstart National Basketball League of Canada.

I went to college in Oshawa, volunteered on the Rogers Television crew and attended Generals games when John Tavares and Michael Del Zotto played here. Tavares’ place was on the side of the mobile production studio. Games would be packed on the weekend, less so during the week. Oshawa’s a Leaf town first, but the Gens do well too.

But despite the passion fans have for the team, the GM Centre is not a huge arena. It seats about 5,000; it’s one large lower bowl with a smattering of seats and boxes the level up. The people I surrounded myself for game broadcasts with liked the Generals; the people I knew back on campus barely knew who they were.

I mention the Generals here only by way of comparison. They’re the only other team in town, really, that can put the NBL’s Oshawa Power in perspective. Up north, above Taunton, there’s college basketball and university hockey. There’s a vocal subset of UOIT fans that wear hardhats and blow horns at Ridgebacks games. There weren’t many at Durham College who wore face paint to Lords games, but I remember the time they did.

It was when the Lords had their own Tavares, a high-volume scorer named Anthony Batchelor. He was the kind of player one sees excelling at smaller programs in the Ontario College Athletic Association: undersized, but with a deft scoring touch. I saw him take games over now and then and I was there when he set the OCAA scoring record. Shortly after I left, he had a tryout with the Toronto Raptors. Last I heard, he was working in Durham’s athletic department.

I don’t see him at the GM Centre this night. I don’t see the Oshawa Power’s big off-season acquisition, either: former NBA Draft pick and Team Canada representative, Denham Brown. Shortly after signing with the team, Brown left to play professionally in Argentina.

But here tonight is former NBAer Michael Ray Richardson, the coach prowling visiting London’s bench. He’s wearing a brown and black sports coat that draws taunts and heckles from the crowd: “Why don’t you sell that thing and buy another assistant coach!”

My friend Dwayne – part of the night’s internet broadcast team – told me Richardson’s the guy to keep an eye on. He’s right: watching him coach is one of the best parts of the night.

Richardson is animated. He’s excitable. He’s always moving around, can’t sit still. Even when London finds itself down big – and they find themselves down 20 at one point – he’s a ball of energy.

He was banned from the NBA once, a long time ago. More recently, he was profiled on Grantland, a story that mentioned the NBL exactly once. He’s coaching in a league that seems and feels like a startup; at the GM Centre, the boards don’t get taken down for Power games. There’s almost no media covering the game and no TV crews broadcasting. The pressure here is almost exclusively on coaching, on winning.

A few days after I see this game, Richardson will be named coach of the month and the first coach recognized by the league. At that point, his team will have seven wins and not lost consecutive games, but on this night, the Power lead 73-58 after three quarters.

They’re having trouble getting shots to drop, but turnovers and fouls are killing London. As the fourth gets going, Oshawa attempts a cool strategy: run the shot clock all the way down and try an off-balance jumper. Maybe it’s less a strategy then a result of London mixing up their defense.

A note about the teams: they’re pretty good. The quality of play here is better than I thought it would be. Going in, I was mildly afraid the game would be played by people who had gone through Canada’s universities, or even the lower-quality OCAA. It isn’t. It’s a small league – my program only has three players on the London Lightning taller than 6’6″ – but these people can play. Yes, there’s the occasional home-grown talent, but there’s people who played at Duke, Kansas State or Oregon State. In other words, it’s a league with legitimate talent. Not bad for a startup.

London keeps chopping away at Oshawa’s lead and with about 4:20 left in the game, they go ahead for the first time tonight. The game tightens up: it’s a one-possession game, each side trading leads. After a hard foul, Richardson explodes at a referee and gets t’d up. Oshawa’s defense holds long enough to force London to a bad shot, grabs the rebound and rushes in transition, but a layup is blocked.

We’re down to 20 seconds left, tied at 87. Both teams exchange free throws as the clock runs down. The Lightning send Morgan Lewis to the line.

Earlier this year, Lewis was the first-overall pick in the first NBL draft. A few years ago, Lewis played NCAA ball for the University of Findlay. In 2009, he averaged about 12 points and six rebounds per game and was named to the all-GLIAC first-team at season’s end. He was probably the team’s best player that year: second in scoring, second in rebounding and started all 36 games. He was eventually named tournament MVP as Findlay won Division-II’s version of March madness.

But, if he’s remembered for anything, it’s for his dunking. Over on YouTube, there’s a nine-minute mix of him making plays, the majority of them dunks. The video trail continues after he left college, following him to Iceland. Witness him dunking against Keflavik or going coast-to-coast for a wide-open dunk. As the Power’s biographical blurb on him reads, Lewis made a name for himself as a prolific dunker.

Lewis hits the free throws. He’ll lead the Power tonight with 21 points on 7-of-17 shooting and grab 12 rebounds. Not bad for the franchise player.

As time expires, the Power run the court but can’t score in time. We go to overtime. Here Oshawa explodes out of the gate, taking a big lead. London starts playing a trapping defense, which works alright – it forces turnovers – but they can’t bridge the gap. Oshawa hangs on to win by four, but it didn’t even feel that close.

It’s an exciting, sometimes sloppy and surprisingly enjoyable game. It’s a good start for the NBL. It’s not often one sees a new league take form in Canada. And with the NBA lockout over – and basketball fans in Canada returning to the Raptors or TV broadcasts – it’s going to be hard for the league to stand out.

But the NBL has a few things going for it: real talent, players like Lewis. It’s got names behind it, coaches like Richardson. And it’s feeding a market that’s woefully underserved: hoops in Canada is limited to the CIS, OCAA and the Toronto Raptors. It’s doing all the little things right. Hopefully, it’s going to be around for a while.