CIA Bounce has played key role in developing top Canadian basketball talent

The fifth in a five-part series looking at some of Canada’s up-and-coming basketball talent. Read the rest of the series here.

Tristan Thompson had just finished taking questions and passing along advice to a group of young basketball players in Mississauga when his mind drifted toward the past.

The 23-year-old may be one of the NBA's up-and-coming power forwards, but he hasn't forgotten those who helped him early on in his career, long before his days in the pros or NCAA.

When asked about his history with CIA Bounce, the Brampton-based grassroots basketball program, Thompson smiled.

“Me and Tony McIntyre go way back,” Thompson said of his relationship with the program’s co-founder during a recent interview.

“He was my first coach . . . We’d be in the gym until midnight on a school night getting shots up just because we wanted to get better.”

It was about 10 years ago that McIntyre founded what was then just known as Bounce. At the time he saw it simply as an opportunity to give back to the community through coaching basketball, but over the years it’s transformed into something much bigger.

When Bounce began consistently running into CIA, another GTA-based program, in tournaments McIntyre and CIA founder Mike George decided to merge and that’s when CIA Bounce was born.

“We just said why don’t we come together and attempt to takeover basketball in Canada and basketball in the United States and just show that our kids are capable of competing at the highest levels,” McIntyre said.

And they have to a large extent. CIA Bounce now runs ‘small ball,’ a program that introduces kids aged four to nine to the sport, youth teams through the Ontario Basketball Association, a handful of camps – the two-day exposure camp that runs in July attracts a large contingent of Division I NCAA coaches – and three elite-level travel teams.

On Thursday five of the program’s alumni could be selected at the NBA draft including Andrew Wiggins, who many have pegged to be the no. 1 overall pick, and Tyler Ennis, McIntyre’s son who’s likely to go later in the first round.

But with all of CIA Bounce’s success, there have been some struggles to in getting the program to where it is now too. Back in 2007 McIntyre and George were searching for ways to obtain funding and keep CIA Bounce afloat financially – for a long time a large part of the cost associated with the program, travel, equipment and gym time, had been paid for directly out of their own pockets.

Help eventually came, but from an unlikely source. When the popular American game show ‘Deal or No Deal’ announced they’d be producing a handful of episodes in Canada, George applied and was selected as a contestant.

He won $144,000 and put half the money back into the program. Those funds provided CIA Bounce with the stability, at least in the short term, they needed.

It wasn’t long after that George and McIntyre drew interest from Nike and were able to strike a sponsorship deal.

And the success on the court has continued ever since. About five years ago CIA Bounce was added to Nike’s 40-team Elite Youth Basketball League, an amateur circuit that allows McIntyre’s – George left the program in 2013 to pursue a career as an NBA agent – under-16 and under-17 teams to travel around the U.S. during the late spring and summer and compete against other top-flight high school players.

It’s not only a chance for his players to prepare themselves for the next level, but also showcase their talents to top NCAA coaches. Of the 40 teams on the EYBL circuit, CIA Bounce is the only one based outside the United States.

“It’s grown so fast,” Thompson said when asked how far the game has come in Canada since he was growing up. “Everyone is starting to gravitate towards basketball and that says something about what we’ve done.”

Thompson was really the first big-name player CIA Bounce played a hand in developing and when he was drafted fourth overall by the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2011 – Cory Joseph, a Toronto native, was also drafted that year – it was big news in this country.

Three years later though, his story is no longer a unique one.

In the last two NBA drafts four more Canadians have been selected and in 2013 Anthony Bennett, another CIA Bounce alumni, became the first ever to be taken No. 1 overall.

That list is expected to grow exponentially Thursday when up to eight Canadians could be chosen at the draft.

McIntyre insists this is only the beginning.

“We’re only scratching the surface,” he said when asked whether Canadian basketball has reached its peak as far as developing talent. “I think the future is even brighter in terms of the amount of kids that are playing, the amount of talent that’s out there and how these kids are developing from such a young age.”

It’s a bold statement from someone whose program has already played a hand in developing Thompson, Bennett, Wiggins, Ennis and a handful of others who could have NBA futures.

And McIntyre knows this summer many of those players will return to the gym in Brampton and help continue to build on the foundation he and George set all those years ago.

“These kids are able to talk to [the alumni], workout with them and use them as mentors or role models,” McIntyre said. “They’re [able to] say, ‘hey that’s the guy I used to be in the gym with and now I’m watching him on TV playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.’ Or ‘hey that’s the guy that helped teach me how to shoot and now he’s in the NBA.’

“I’d rather [the kids] have our guys as role models than other NBA guys as role models because [they] come home to Christmas parties, they come home to the gym, they’re approachable and they’re in reach for all of our players to be a part of. So when one of our guys makes it, it’s like everybody makes it.”