On June 14, in a nail-biting 114-110 win, the NBA’s only Canadian team became the first non-U.S. contender to win the NBA championship. The city of Toronto erupted into a month-long celebration, and Canada was officially put on the map as a basketball nation. But the real leg work for that title started 10 years before.

The GTA is now one of the world’s top producers of NBA and elite basketball talent. On average, there are usually a couple of kids from the GTA who are selected in every NBA draft, which is more than most cities around the world. This dense talent pool is a result of world-class training for high performing athletes, which was non-existent in Canada only a short time ago.

The Canadian National Basketball Program, which launched its Junior Academy Program less than a decade ago, was the first formal nationwide training program with the goal of guiding high-potential young athletes to a career in the NBA. Before this, young basketball talent looking for professional-level training would need to travel internationally, an opportunity that is out of reach for many young families.

Since then, the GTA has seen a massive increase in corporate investment support into youth training programs. Included in that are the Royal Crown Academic School and its Nike Basketball Program. Athletes in our program, who were scouted from across Canada, have access to a state-of-the-art health and nutrition program, world renowned sports therapists, as well as top tier education and boarding.

All of these costs are covered through scholarships totaling about $1 million annually, as well as support from Nike Basketball. This type of talent incubator is something you would not have found in Canada a few years ago.

So why are we seeing investment into new basketball talent all of a sudden? Canada has historically been a hockey nation, but basketball has been bubbling below the surface for a while.

There’s a simple formula for creating a global talent factory. First, you need a catalyst — the presence of a local team. As kids grow up idolizing local sports heroes on TV, wearing the team jersey, going to games or shooting hoops after school with their friends, they create a personal connection to the sport, and a desire to make it “their sport.” This creates demand.

Once there is a large enough pool of young talent with a passion to be great, it attracts outside investment from corporations who identify the talent potential. This investment into training, education and technology acts as an incubator to create truly great athletes.

The seeds for Canada’s basketball renaissance were planted in 1993 with the inception of the Toronto Raptors, the first Canadian team to join the NBA. But it took an entire generation of kids growing up with basketball in their households for the sport to become ingrained into our country’s fabric.

We’re seeing this trend with other professional sports, too. Tennis Canada, for example, recently developed a high performance recruitment program to identify top talent. It’s unlikely we would have such a large talent pool if Eugenie Bouchard or Daniel Nestor hadn’t battled their way to the top of their leagues on TV.

There is one more ingredient that has made the GTA the top city in the world for producing elite level basketball talent, and that’s our multiculturalism. Basketball, like soccer, is a universal sport. While only 1.6 million people around the world play organized hockey, basketball is estimated to be played by a minimum of 450 million people worldwide.

Kids moving to Canada from around the world, who have never set foot in an ice rink, are more likely to choose basketball as their organized sport of choice. This is one of the reasons that Toronto’s Royal Crown Academic School and its Nike Basketball Program is run out of the city’s top international high school.

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Not too long ago, I was training future NBA all-stars like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and R.J. Barret out of a small gym in Hamilton. Back then, Canada was brimming with potential basketball talent. Now, with programs like Royal Crown Academic School and its Nike Basketball Program, we have the resources to not just develop talent, but also increase the number of athletes entering the sport professionally.

With the success of the Raptors, I can only imagine how those resources are going to grow.