Tucked away in the industrial Brampton Strip, where rows of warehouses and auto repair companies blend together, is a basketball gym that has quietly shaped a generation of Canadian NBA talent.
While the unassuming facility on Rutherford Road is nearly impossible to find – except for young children walking with their parents, ready for training – it is the current home. UPlay Canadaa grassroots basketball program where many NBA stars got their start.
Posters hang inside the left side of its front doors of NBA superstar Shay Gilgos Alexander and New York Knicks forward RJ Barrett, two of UPlay Canada’s dozens of success stories over the years. Other notable talents include Portland Trail Blazers guard Shedon Sharp, Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nimbard, Orlando Magic guard Caleb Hostan and Milwaukee Bucks Lyndell Wigginton.
This past NBA season, 23 players in the league were born or raised in Canada — more than a quarter of those players are UPlay Canada alumni. Over the past seven years, the program has selected four of its players in the NBA Draft lottery.
UPlay Canada is set to see another alumnus make it to the NBA, and Leonard Miller from Scarborough is projected to be selected late in the first round in the draft Thursday night. Miller will be the seventh player to be drafted since 2018 by UPlay Canada.
Most of the players that have come through UPlay Canada are helping and supporting the next younger generation,” Sharpe told the star. “They support the young people and help each other try to get to the next level. We just wanted to get to the same place they are at, which is the league.”
UPlay, which stands for the United Youth Leadership Academy, was started in 2007 with the goal of creating future leaders and a way to get scholarships for students through sports.
It began when Dwayne Washington arrived in Canada in 2004 to pursue a PhD in education, then settled in Hamilton to become a high school teacher.
Washington grew up in the Bronx, New York and learned the game of basketball from Rod Strickland, who played 17 seasons in the NBA and was from the same project building where he worked. The 46-year-old saw a lack of resources and access for kids to play basketball at a high level in Hamilton.
“I knew you could teach and coach, it just goes hand in hand, and I thought it was something I wanted,” Washington said. “I sacrificed a lot of money in the beginning because I thought I could make an impact on children’s lives.”
Gilgios Alexander was one of these children. Before the Oklahoma City guard became a first-team NBA star with the Thunder, he was an eighth grader who walked to the gym with his mom to try out for UPlay Canada.
Gilgeous-Alexander has played with UPlay Canada for over four years. But when he transferred schools in the tenth grade to Sir Alan MacNab – where Washington was studying – he separated himself from the majority of his competitors.
The Hamilton kid picked up a daily routine that he learned from UPlay Canada alumnus Frances Kyapwai, who grew up in Parkdale before moving to Hamilton.
“If there hadn’t been UPlay, I wouldn’t have played basketball,” Kiapway said. “I certainly would have been on the streets, I tell you a lot.”
Kiapway went on to play NCAA basketball at Ball State University in Indiana and finished third in school history in triples in a season. Before going to the NCAA, Sir Alan McNab attended and took a young Gilgios Alexander under his wing.
Kiapway left Gilgos Alexander with a routine that consisted of getting up at 6 am and going to the local YMCA to exercise. Then, he’d meet up with Washington for a training session before his morning classes.
“It’s kind of where that (for me) started,” Gilgios Alexander told the Star. “They really teach you how to play the game of basketball the right way. I think that’s something that’s been lost a little bit in the art of basketball growing up now. It was really big in my development.”
Washington’s lunch hours consisted of Gilgos Alexander sitting in his classroom, watching basketball tape on Pick and Roll, and studying future teammate Chris Paul. His day didn’t end there, with after school training and late night hours at the YMCA before he finally got home.
“What you see now is thousands of hours of hard work, but he wasn’t (just) talented—unless you call hard work and flexibility ‘talent,’” Washington said. “I call that trait he has. This is it.”
Washington would encourage Gilgeous-Alexander to play his last two years of high school basketball in the United States. The program began expanding across Ontario and the following year, fielded as the only Canadian team in the Nike Elite Youth Basketball League (EYBL).
Founded in 2010, the league features some of the best high school basketball teams in the United States, and has given more young Canadians the opportunity to compete against the best prospects in the world without having to be on an American team.
“My first year playing was 16U and that’s when I started getting offers,” Pacers center guard Andrew Nimbard recalls.
“The best part about UPlay is that it’s such a great opportunity. You get to play in these rings in front of all these great coaches and that’s where you get exposure to take the next step in basketball.”
The player who most likely benefits is Sharpe. In the summer of 2021, London, Ontario. The Nationals dominated the EYBL circuit, scoring 22.6 points in just over 28 minutes per game.
He went from unknown to becoming a #1 in high school before Portland selected him with the seventh pick in the 2022 draft.
Along with Sharpe during the entire pre-draft process was Kiapway, who became UPlay’s skill development coach after his collegiate career. Washington invited the 28-year-old to help coach Sharpe through the NBA Combine Draft. This eventually led to Kiapway joining Sharpe in Portland full-time as his coach.
When the Blazers locked out the majority of their starters to finish the regular season, Sharpe’s work with Kiapway began to show. Sharpe averaged 23.7 points, 6.1 rebounds and 4.1 assists in 35.9 minutes per game over his last 10 games through the end of the year.
“I wasn’t surprised, I don’t think Sheedon was,” Kiapway said. “There’s a lot behind the scenes that he’s doing that a lot of people don’t see. During this whole period, he’s been watching the movie, in the gym doing weight room and therapy. Every road match he’s been working out.”
For Washington, what began as an opportunity for kids in Hamilton to play basketball at a high level has resulted in about 100 Canadians receiving basketball scholarships, most of them from Division I schools.
While the results were more than he could have imagined, UPlay’s success formula hasn’t changed.
“We’re just trying to use sports to help build the leaders of tomorrow,” Washington said. “Take advantage of basketball and the sport we love.”
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