In part two of our series on CIA Bounce, we step back to look at the program’s origins, and how a combination of hard work, big dreams and luck led to the improbable rise of a modern-day AAU power.

By Dave Zarum

In case you missed part one, find it here.

Those who were there describe it as a war. As heated abattle on the club basketball circuit as they’ve ever been a part of.

It was a tournament in Syracuse, N.Y., in 2006, and the Brampton, Ont.-based team Bounce Basketball was in the semi-finals versus an AAU squad called the D.C. Ballers, whose roster included future ‘Cuse stars Jonny Flynn and Paul Harris.

The Bounce players—including Freddy Appiah, Jason Hannibal and future York University star David Tyndale, all from the Greater Toronto Area—were lesser known than their American counterparts, but just as talented.
 

 
The teams had gone shot for shot all game, each establishing a new level of intensity only to see it matched and exceeded by their opponent. The referees could barely keep everybody in check—including the crowd that had formed around the otherwise innocuous court.

As the game came down to the wire, Bounce head coach and founder Tony McIntyre snuck a glance down the sidelines at the crowd that had formed near his bench. He couldn’t believe what he saw: Christians In Action, a rival team from the GTA, in full attendance. The crazy part? They were cheering for Bounce.

After a would-be game-winner for Bounce swished through the net at the buzzer, the referee called it off. It was at that moment the club circuit in Canada changed forever.

On a cold, miserable February afternoon in Brampton, Ont., Tony McIntyre returns home from his day job at a pharmaceutical company. After pulling into the driveway of his family home, he delivers an Iced Capp to his daughter, Brittany, sidestepping a sea of brand new CIA Bounce jerseys laid out on the floor, each adorned with a Nike logo on the shoulder.

Though the tryout process is just wrapping up for many of McIntyre’s teams, over the coming months they’ll go on to impress in a slew of major tournaments, while some of its standout players will represent their country in international competitions across multiple age groups. And in June, the program’s most famous alum, Andrew Wiggins, will become the second-consecutive CIA Bounce player to be taken first overall in the NBA Draft.

The story of CIA Bounce is one of years of hard work, big risks and even bigger dreams. It’s also a story about the power of youth sports, and how the impact made by volunteers who devote their time towards helping kids can reverberate for generations.

Ask those who have been with the club from the start and they’ll admit that at times it is hard to believe that what began as a small passion project could turn into a major player in the AAU industry.

But here we are.

CIA-Bounce co-founder Tony McIntyre. Credit: Edison Sigua

McIntyre heads downstairs to the family basement, which these days could serve as a museum of modern Canadian basketball—a shrine, even. His office is there, with trophies and medals lining the walls—most won by his youngest sons Dylan and Tyler Ennis, the former a standout guard at Villanova and the latter drafted 17 spots behind Wiggins this past June. Hanging beside his computer is a Cleveland Cavaliers hat—the one Anthony Bennett received on draft night in 2013. There are scrapbooks everywhere you look and in the neighbouring room, videotapes are stacked floor to ceiling, home movies from years on the road and in the gym with his boys and their childhood friends—Bennett, Wiggins, Sim Bhullar and others. Around the corner in a bedroom shared by Dylan and Tyler (complete with bunk bed), piles of boxes of unworn sneakers reach as high as the VHS tapes down the hall.

It’s not hard to figure out why McIntyre’s kids have been so successful in sports, considering their father used to be a standout athlete himself. A Brampton native, McIntyre’s first sport was hockey, which is how he first gained an appreciation of the role of youth coaches, one that would ultimately guide the course of his life. “I grew up in a single-parent home,” he says, “just my mom, me and my little brother. So all my life I had been dependent on coaches helping out—picking me up for practice, taking me out for dinner, everything.”

Hockey was his life, the love he’d planned his future around. But one summer in high school, he fell off a roof while working as a student painter when a ladder broke beneath him, effectively ending his athletic dreams. It was a dark time to be sure, and in frustration McIntyre swore off hockey for good. But he wasn’t ready to do the same for all sports and, at 19 years old, he faced the daunting question of what he was going to do with the rest of his life. “I kept thinking of all those coaches who pumped so much time and effort into me,” he says. “And I said, ‘I’m going try to do everything that these people did for me, to give back and coach, mentor kids pick them up—everything. Do whatever I got to. Because I wouldn’t be who I am if they didn’t do it for me.’”

So he turned to his other passion, basketball. McIntyre started by volunteering for a local house league team, whose coaches were more than happy for the help regardless of his youth and inexperience. “I was 19 years old coaching 16-year-olds,” he recalls with a laugh. “I looked like them, I talked like them, but I took it serious.”

Intense on the sidelines like his teams were on the court, McIntyre made an impression. He was quickly invited to help with an older rep team, and the following season was given one of his own—and then another. Whenever a coach quit, McIntyre offered to replace them. At one point, he led four teams at once—two boys’ and two girls’.

While he was still learning the nuances of the game from the bench, McIntyre always shared his story with his players, erasing any uneasiness he felt due to his lack of coaching experience. “I would use my life experience as motivation,” he says, “so my teams would adopt that mindset: Play like today is your last day, because you’re not promised tomorrow.”

After a few years, he took on a younger team, mainly six-year-olds. His sons Brandon and Dylan were both on the team. Tyler was often there too, watching games and practices, at that point barely bigger than the ball.

By the time Dylan reached Grade 8, it was clear the Ennis-McIntyre boys (the family decided to drop the “McIntyre” from the back of their jerseys to avoid any undo attention brought on by having their dad as a coach) were good. McIntyre’s team—playing under the umbrella of a club called the Brampton Blue Devils—went entire seasons only losing one or two games. Still, he wanted the boys to get more out of their experience. “This whole AAU thing”, as he puts it, was largely uncharted territory, but he knew there was an opportunity to mine it, as other Canadian clubs like Grassroots were beginning to do.

McIntyre arranged a meeting with the BBD organizers. “Look,” he began, “I’ve got this team that’s won 200 games and lost five over the past three years. This team is special and the clock is ticking. I want to take them to the States and try to get these kids some scholarships.”

“The response I got was ‘No, don’t bother. There’s really nobody from Brampton good enough to get scholarships.’” McIntyre says. He stewed about the rejection for a week before reiterating his request. Again, the answer was no. “Honestly, I just don’t think they realized how good these kids were and how much potential they had outside of Brampton.”

McIntyre resigned his position on the spot. The next day he started Bounce Basketball.

Kofi Mensa leads the CIA-Bounce players onto the court in La Roche Sur Yon, France. Courtesy of Kofiamensa.com

In nearby Malton, Ont., a young teacher named Mike George had gone through a similar experience and found a similar solution, establishing a basketball program of his own—Christians In Action, known simply as ‘CIA’. By the time of that 2006 tournament in Syracuse, CIA boasted a group that included Melvin Ejim, Tayvon Prince and Kofi Mensa, a wildly talented guard who passed away from cancer at the age of 19. Bounce’s roster included kids like Jordan Clement, Dylan Ennis and Tristan Thompson.

CIA and Bounce often found themselves playing in the same tournaments, both at home and in the northeastern United States. But it seemed no matter where they played, the two small teams from suburban Ontario always wound up meeting in the finals. A heated rivalry soon developed. The kids fought each other at school and ruined each other’s homework at every chance. “He’d recruit my kids, I’d recruit his kids,” McIntyre says. “It was bad.”

So you can imagine his surprise after the would-be buzzer-beater was questionably called off, to see CIA players rush the court. It was a madhouse, and for the first time the two Canadian teams had each other’s backs. “After that, Mike George and them came up to us and we started talking,” McIntyre remembers. “I realized, ‘We haven’t even spoken before’. That’s how heated it was between us.”

After a brief exchange, the two coaches shook hands. “Call me on Monday,” George said. The next week, the two met at Westwood, a local shopping mall.

“Why don’t we come together and try to put our difference aside?” George asked.

McIntyre agreed. “You’re doing what we’re trying to do, maybe we go about it different ways, but at the end of the day the goal is the same: to get kids scholarships and keep them out of trouble.”

“They realized ‘what was the point of going into all these tournaments if we’re just going to meet each other in the final?’” says Dwayne Ramage, then a part of CIA and now CIA Bounce’s 15-U coach. “They ended up coming to an agreement. Since then it has just taken off.”

But not without a major windfall from the unlikeliest of sources.

Credit: Courtesy of Kofiamensa.com

The game show Deal Or No Deal was a surprising success for NBC when it first aired in the United States. In 2007, the show’s producers announced a six-episode run in Toronto, where host Howie Mandel was born and raised. The co-founders of the newly formed CIA Bounce knew it would take a significant financial commitment to achieve their goal of becoming one of the top travelling teams in North America. So, soon after the Deal Or No Deal announcement, they applied for the show.

The producers liked the idea of spotlighting a teacher trying to raise funds for a youth sports program. George was accepted as a contestant. When it came time to tape, McIntyre and the whole CIA Bounce organization descended on the CBC studios on Front Street in Toronto to cheer him on, with then-Toronto Raptors stars Chris Bosh and T.J. Ford sending in taped messages of support.

By the time the episode ended, George had won $144,000. As he had promised, he put half the money back into CIA Bounce. In a recent interview with NBA.com, George admitted he would have pushed his luck further on the show had he been competing for just himself. But knowing there were dozens in his newest family counting on him, “I thought, ‘Don’t be greedy.’”

Needless to say, the $72,000 infusion was crucial.

“That’s what kick-started CIA Bounce in our first year,” McIntyre says. “We bought uniforms, score clocks, equipment; secured gym time, which was always the biggest obstacle; held camps, seminars. We basically put all the money into building a solid foundation.”

But perhaps the most significant benefit was that during the club’s early years, George and McIntyre could afford to send their teams to France.

If you thought Brampton was an improbable basketball hotbed, then you’ve never been to La Roche Sur Yon in France.

Located near the country’s southwestern coast, the town hosts a yearly European club championship, and the organizers reached out to CIA Bounce looking for a North American representative to take part in a series of exhibitions. McIntyre figured it would be a fun experience for the kids, but could have never imagined what awaited them.

The first year, CIA Bounce landed in Paris to find a welcome committee at the airport and a swank 50-person passenger bus at their disposal. “We never anticipated just how much they loved the game in Europe,” McIntyre says. “It was an eye-opening experience for our kids.”

A warm-up game in Paris drew a crowd of 5,600. The opponents were young pros in the French league, 19 and 20 years old; most of the CIA Bounce kids had just graduated from Grade 9. Still, the Canadians performed well, and by the time they arrived in La Roche Sur Yon, they had reached celebrity status. “We get off the train and notice these posters and billboards all over the city advertising the tournament,” McIntyre says. “They take us to the gym to shoot around and practice a bit before and we get there—a 3,000-seat stadium! There were another 500 people in there just watching us work out. There was a team from Lithuania, one from Spain, and they’re all in the crowd, too. We’re in awe and they were treating us like an NBA team.”

The kids were hounded for autographs the whole week. When they tossed off their warm-up jerseys to enter a game, hysterical French girls swooped in to claim them before scurrying back into the stands. “We get to our first game and there are all of these people lined up around the block,” says McIntyre. “I asked our driver ‘What are they lining up for?’ She turns to me, laughing, and says, ‘Your game, of course.’ ‘Are you serious,’ I thought. If this was us at home, we’d maybe get 20 people! Mike and I kept saying to each other, ‘Could you imagine if the culture of basketball was like this in Toronto?’

“When you talk about the mentality of the program changing, that was the turning point. It also showed our players what basketball can do for them. You saw it in the kids’ faces, that realization that ‘this is real.’”

Over the next few years, the trip became a tradition. When a new Grade 10 team was formed, they’d head over to France for a week and a half. They’d impress against international competition, excelling against future pros like Jonas Valanciunas, and get the opportunity to see and experience a different country. As McIntyre puts it, “It was about more than basketball. This was our opportunity to say, ‘There’s more to the world than Brampton.’”

Since 2006, more than 40 players who spent their summers suiting up for CIA Bounce have received scholarships at NCAA schools, many moving on to pro careers in leagues around the globe.

What a long, strange trip it’s been.

And as McIntyre will tell you, they’ve only just begun.

Check back soon for part three, on the senior team’s busy live season and the emergence of a future star (or two or… you get the point).