How the long-bumbling Raptors have been major players in this year's NCAA tourney

In 1995, the Toronto Raptors began playing in the NBA. You may not have noticed.

Over the past 19 seasons they've won a single playoff series, lost nearly 59 percent of their games (although they currently lead the Atlantic Division) and struggled to keep the few good players they ever had.

Which isn't to say the Raptors haven't had an impact on basketball. They impacted it, actually, in a remarkably big, if most unexpected, way … by helping create a tidal wave of talent that is overwhelming the NCAA tournament.

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Melvin Ejim, currently the leading scorer for Iowa State, was 4 when the Raptors were founded. Cyclones teammate Naz Long, a clutch guard, was 2, the same age as Nik Stauskas, the leading scorer for Michigan. Brady Heslip, Baylor's second-leading scorer was 5, just a year older than Dwight Powell, Stanford's top big man and second-leading scorer.

Each grew up in the greater Toronto area. They weren't alone. So too did just-eliminated stars such as Tyler Ennis, Kevin Pangos and Sim Bhullar of Syracuse, Gonzaga and New Mexico State, respectively.

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Then there is Andrew Wiggins of Kansas, the potential No. 1 pick in June's NBA draft who could follow Anthony Bennett, formerly of UNLV and the No. 1 pick in last June's NBA draft. That'd be two consecutive top overall picks from the same Canadian city.

These are but a few of many. The Toronto Star reported there were 97 Canadians on college rosters this year, the majority from greater Toronto.

It's an unexpected influx of top talent from a city of over 2 million and a region that boasts more than 6 million. It's dictating how American college basketball is being played and has redrawn common recruiting territories.

These days, there may be as much elite talent in Mississauga as Manhattan.

It's one thing for colleges near the border – be it Syracuse (Ennis) or St. Bonaventure (Andrew Nicholson currently of the Orlando Magic) or Boston College (Olivier Hanlan) – to get up there. Now almost everyone is working Canada, and especially Toronto. That includes a slew of coaches from as far away as the Big 12.

"I think the success the Canadian players have had in the Big 12 has led a lot of additional kids to come to our league," said Baylor's Scott Drew, whose campus sits in Central Texas but finds Canadians familiar with his conference. He also jokes, of course, that "warm weather" helps, too.

Perhaps the chief reason the talent is there for the recruiting, the players say, is that long-bumbling afterthought of an NBA team.

"The Toronto Raptors," said Stauskas. "I think when they came in, we had an NBA team to watch every night. I used to watch every game growing up. And I went to some games. Having the Raptors around was definitely a positive."

Basically, it wasn't any different than any major city in the United States. Yes, a lot of kids, the majority of kids even, flocked to ever-popular hockey. But if that wasn't your sport, if you considered yourself too tall for skating, or you were simply mesmerized by hoops, well here was an example playing right there at home.

Suddenly basketball wasn't just an American thing, like football. It was Canadian, too. It was local.

Perhaps the best proof of the Raptors' influence on inspiring young athletes to play basketball is that Toronto produces overwhelmingly more talent than any other Canadian city, including Vancouver, which saw the Grizzlies last just six years before bolting to Memphis in 2001.

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