Canada’s Roy Rana competing for high stakes with Egypt at FIBA World Cup

Earlier this summer, Roy Rana’s non-stop global basketball adventure had landed him home for the first time in a while. 

In a west-end Toronto coffee shop, around the corner from where he grew up at Lansdowne and Bloor, one of Canada’s most accomplished basketball coaches took a brief pause and reflected on the path that has taken him farther than he could have ever possibly imagined when he started coaching at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate in northwest Toronto, figuring out what he didn’t know as he went along. 

The puzzles were solved, and the questions answered over the course of a 30-year coaching career that is still trending upwards. At the end of a busy summer and a too-short visit home, Rana finds himself in Manila at the FIBA Basketball World Cup as the head coach of the Egyptian national team, which he led to their first World Cup win in 29 years with a blowout against Mexico on Tuesday. 

It’s been a journey for Rana, who made a name for himself with five provincial championships as the head coach of the legendary Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute program over nine years beginning in 2000, helping countless student-athletes advance to play in college ranks in Canada and the U.S. in the process. He then moved a few blocks over to head up what was a struggling program at Toronto Metropolitan University (then Ryerson University) where he built the Rams into a U Sports powerhouse. From there, Rana made the unprecedented leap to the NBA with the Sacramento Kings as an assistant to then-head coach Luke Walton in 2019-20. 

After Walton was let go at the end of 2021-22, Rana cooled his heels in Northern California for a year before taking a head coaching job in Japan’s rising B.League with the Kyoto Hannaryz.

In between, he managed to find time to help Germany qualify for the Olympics as an assistant coach and was in Tokyo for the games in 2021. 

Granted, it’s hard to look back when you are hurtling through space, but with a mid-summer moment to think about it and the World Cup then still weeks ahead in the future when we spoke, Rana had to admit it’s all hard to believe. 

“Yeah, I probably don’t (reflect on my path) as much as I maybe used to,” said Rana, 54. “But, you know, I do have a real sense of inner satisfaction that I was willing to go for it because a lot of people they're just not willing to take those risks. Like at 50 I decided to leave (TMU) where I probably could have had a job for life. And I took the plunge and said, I'm gonna go for it. And I feel really good that I was willing to take that risk, and it's allowed me to live the last four years of my life in a way that I never would have dreamed, and it's been nothing but positive. It's been really good.”

It could get significantly better in a hurry. 

If things had worked out a little differently it could have been Rana coaching Canada in Jakarta. Rana was interviewed to be the head coach of the Canadian men’s team after they decided to move on from Jay Triano and before they eventually decided to hire Nick Nurse in the summer of 2019.

Rana had helped Canada qualify for the 2019 World Cup and would have loved the opportunity to coach the senior team after leading the U19 national team to their historic gold medal at the World Championships in Cairo in 2017 — still Canada’s only title at a global FIBA event. 

But Rana has made it to the World Cup in any case and is competing for high stakes on behalf of Egypt. 

While Canada takes their perfect 3-0 record into the second group stage with games against Brazil Friday and Spain Sunday and an eye on advancing to the quarterfinals and beyond, the competition continues earnestly in the classification portion of the draw, where spots from 17-32 will be determined. 

It may not be as high on the radar, but the games matter: Egypt is one of five African countries in the lower half of the draw that will be fighting for the one spot available via direct qualifying for the 2024 Olympics in Paris. 

The opportunity is extraordinary — Egypt hasn’t been to the Olympics since 1988. Once one of Africa’s leading basketball nations — only Angola has won as many continental medals — basketball in Egypt has fallen on hard times. Just getting them to the World Cup has been a triumph — Egypt was 11th at the African championships but went 8-4 in World Cup qualifying to earn a spot in the World Cup.

Getting to the Olympics would be a dream, and another starred item on Rana’s growing resume. 

Egypt would love him to make it happen and he is creating a team of believers. 

“When you wear the Egyptian jersey, you play not only for yourself but for your nation,” was how Egyptian star Anas Mahmoud explained the commitment in the Middle Eastern edition of Esquire recently. “We are dedicated to further popularizing basketball in Egypt, and our efforts have yielded positive results so far, which we aim to sustain.”

Winning the U19 World Cup with Canada in Cairo helped put Rana on Egypt’s radar and it’s been a perfect fit since they came together while Rana was combing through opportunities in the year he took off after he was let go by Sacramento. 

“I think everybody knows my history in international basketball,” Rana said during our conversation in Toronto. “I got some feedback that Egypt was looking for a coach and started that conversation and pretty quickly started to realize that there was some talent there. I didn't really know what was going on with basketball in North Africa … other than being there in 2017 — but as I explored it started to really get pretty interesting pretty quickly. You know, it just made sense at the time so I said, hey, why not? I just took the plunge. It’s been an incredible opportunity.”

International success tends to breed coaching trees. The achievements Spain has had at the global level in the past 10 to 15 years have made Spanish coaches in demand worldwide and it’s perhaps not a coincidence that both of Canada’s national teams are headed by Spanish coaches in Jordi Fernandez on the men’s side and Victor Lapena with the women. 

In years past, Serbian coaches were highly sought after, with the Toronto Raptors making Darko Rajakovic the second Serbian head coach in NBA history just this summer. 

But Canadian coaches are beginning to have their moment, too. Former national team player and head coach Gord Herbert has the German national team in medal contention with a 3-0 record to start the World Cup, while former Canadian women’s head coach Lisa Thomaidis is running the women’s team for Germany, a job she got after helping Canada's women’s team to qualify for three consecutive Olympic tournaments and rise to No. 4 in the world. 

“Listen, I mean, what's happening in Canada and the growth of the program and at all levels, that’s noticed, globally. It has some meaning,” said Rana. “A lot of people want to try and see if they can replicate that in whatever ways. So certainly, my experience with the national team in Canada helped for sure.”

Rana is trying to repeat the formula for success he’s used at every stop in his burgeoning career: Take a base of young talent — Egypt is one of the youngest teams, top to bottom, at the World Cup — and infuse them with his special brand of intensity and confidence, and expect the wins to follow. 

It’s a blueprint that has taken him from coaching high school basketball in North York to the top of the FIBA podium, to the NBA, the Olympics and now the World Cup and — Egypt is hoping — to ever greater heights, however far from home.