Simisola Shittu is six-foot-eight and hasn’t yet finished Grade 10 at Corpus Christi High School in Burlington. He moves like a cat, without a hint of the awkwardness you might expect from a 15-year-old with size 15 feet.

For Canada, for basketball and for Canada Basketball, he represents the past, present and an emerging tradition he very much wants to be a part of. On Wednesday in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, Shittu and his teammates on Canada’s U16 national team wore the red and white for the first time in their careers as they began play in the FIBA Americas Championship with an eye on qualifying for the U17 World Championships next summer.

"This is the path I want to go on," says Shittu, who arrived in Canada with his family from England at age five. "I want to see the world playing basketball, have fun while I’m playing and hopefully make it to the Olympics and the NBA."

Normally a team of 15- and 16-year-olds isn’t worthy of a lot of attention but it feels a little bit different this time around. Among insiders, this group is drawing some comparisons from the Cadet team that won a bronze medal at the inaugural Cadet World Championships in Germany in 2011. That team featured Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins — each taken first overall in the NBA draft — as well as NCAA stars and potential NBA draftees Kevin Pangos and Oliver Hanlon.

Shittu is one reason this entry is worth watching closely. He’s ranked as the top college prospect his age in Canada and has already gained his share of attention in the United States. His profile will only increase as he considers attending high school down south in September. Another is Rowan Barrett, Jr. — the son of Canada Basketball senior men’s team executive vice-president Rowan Barrett — who just finished Grade 9 and is widely considered one of the best players his age in the world.

But yet another reason is that this age group, as well as a highly-regarded U19 Canadian team that is competing in the world junior championships in Greece June 27-July 5, are the first teams out of the gate in what Canada Basketball hopes will be a transformative summer for the program.

The senior men’s and women’s team will have unprecedented profile and visibility when they compete at the Pan Am Games in Toronto in July. Then they each play their respective Olympic qualifying events — the women in Edmonton August 9-16 and the men in Mexico City beginning August 31.

Success in their respective qualifiers would propel both teams into the Summer Games in Brazil in a year’s time, with each team having a reasonable chance to compete for a medal. It’s been 15 years since both the men and women have made it to the same Olympics and they’ve arguably never had reason to be mentioned as potential medallists.

That Canada is in the midst of a basketball talent explosion is indisputable, and this summer is “go time.”

Which brings us back to the U16 men. If Canadian basketball is going to become a world power in the model of the great Spanish and Argentinean teams which have challenged U.S. supremacy in recent years, they need a replenishable reservoir of talent. The U16s represent Canada Basketball’s efforts to stock that pool younger and sooner. Shittu was first exposed to provincial and national level training when his was in the sixth grade.

"This age level is important because in any organization, you are always looking for sustainability long term and a large part of that is what’s coming up through the pipeline," Barrett said while watching his son and his teammates in their final practices in Canada last week. The former Olympian is in Argentina with his wife to watch their son begin his own national team journey.

The early connection to the national team programs means that athletes like Shittu have grown up dreaming in red and white. They know that Wiggins won a medal for Canada at 15. They know that Milwaukee Bucks guard Tyler Ennis led the junior world championships in scoring the summer before he was a first-round pick in the NBA.

For a long time, Canada Basketball wasn’t necessarily relevant to young players dreaming of making it to the NBA. That’s changed. Bridges have been built between the provincial and national programs and the elite AAU clubs that are also central to their development.

"That’s important," says Barrett. "You’re not recruiting. They want to know what the dates are for the tryouts. They’ve been gunning for this. They have the jerseys on their wall … I’m sure it’s not lost on them how many of the guys who have come up through our junior programs end up getting drafted by the NBA."

That’s all part of the future that Shittu sees for himself. He looks at players like Wiggins, Tristan Thompson and others as trailblazers and examples. This week in Argentina, he and his teammates get to take their first step along the same road.

"I feel a connection to those guys," he says. "They played for Team Canada and they did well. You feel some pressure because they made a path for us and we have to continue the wave of Canadian basketball."