More than 200 students from Cardinal Newman Catholic School, in Brampton, Ontario, filed into the Canadian Broadcasting Centre to cheer on the popular eighth-grade teacher from Room 26. It was January 2007, and Mike George was about to be on television.

The game show “Deal or No Deal” had gone to Toronto, and George applied to be a contestant because he needed money. Not for himself: Half the winnings, George told the host Howie Mandel on the set, would go toward supporting his grass-roots youth basketball program, Characteristics Inspiring Achievement, or C.I.A.

Tyler Ennis, a 12-year-old basketball prospect who was in the audience, could cheer for that. He was in eighth grade at Cardinal Newman, and his father, Tony McIntyre, had recently paired his own youth team, Bounce, with George’s C.I.A.

So George played the game, picking suitcases based on the jersey numbers of his favorite N.B.A. players. He won $144,000. And, as promised, he put half into C.I.A. Bounce.