'The world's a smaller place than it was back in the mid-1990s." With the NBA all-star game coming to town next month to help celebrate the Toronto Raptors' 20th anniversary, long-time team broadcaster Jack Armstrong talks about the evolution of basketball in the city.
Before becoming a Raptors broadcaster, you coached at Niagara University in Western New York for a decade and recruited players from here. Can you talk about the growth in the basketball culture locally?
I've seen a dramatic shift, on every front – the interest level, the quality of player talent, the improvement in coaching, and the overall awareness and keen sense of what goes into the game. The level of enthusiasm has absolutely blown up.
The Raptors have been around for 20 years. The first-overall NBA draft picks in 2013 and 2014 were Toronto's Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins, both in their early 20s. Would it be too simplistic to credit the Raptors for that growth?
Well, when it was announced that not only Toronto but Vancouver would get NBA franchises, I'll never forget it. I was in a meeting with my assistant coaches, and I said, 'Guys, that's the new frontier.' I think it's pretty evident, when you look at all these young Canadian players now in the NBA, and all these ladies as well playing college basketball and the WNBA and overseas, it just speaks volumes about the exposure that has come.
Toronto's a bigger city now and more ethnically varied. Has that played a role in basketball's popularity here?
I say to people across the NBA that Toronto has the most diverse fan base in the league by far. Just walk around the Air Canada Centre during a Raptor game. It's the United Nations. A lot of these folks from around the world don't come to Canada with an automatic connection to hockey. Their connection to sport is soccer or basketball. Just drive around the GTA. There are still a lot of kids out on the street with hockey goals and people with backyard rinks, but you'll see every school yard has a basketball basket and a lot of driveways now have baskets hanging over garages. That, to me, says the gospel is spreading.
The Raptors went through a phase where star players, American players specifically, didn't seem to want to play here. In response to that, did the team consciously look to bring international players to Toronto?
Absolutely. I think [former Raptors president and general manager] Bryan Colangelo was a visionary in that regard.
And has Toronto's reputation around the league improved over the years?
Yes. When you talk to most NBA players, they [say they] love it when they come to Toronto. The fact that the all-star game will be here, it's a celebration of not only a sport but it's a celebration that this market has arrived on the NBA landscape as a legitimate basketball market.
Are bigger and better things to come?
Honestly, I think this is one of the top markets in the NBA by far. It's one of the elite, and it's a sleeping giant. It is a sleeping giant.
Toronto Raptors play the Chicago Bulls, Jan. 3, 3:30 p.m. $49 to $4,108. Air Canada Centre, 50 Bay St., 1-855-727-8677 or ticketmaster.ca. All-Star Weekend Toronto 2016, Feb. 12 to 14. allstarweekendtoronto.com.