Andrea Thompson’s days of driving a school bus may soon be over — her fading dream of owning a palatial spa and beauty salon about to come true. Husband Trevor may want to re-consider those long, lonely overnight haulage trips in his rig.The Brampton couple and their four children are expected to travel to the Prudential Centre in Newark, N.J. next month to watch eldest son Tristan make history. He is likely to become the highest drafted Canadian in NBA history, an honour tantamount to winning the lottery.
Tristan, a standout freshman at the University of Texas, leads a wave of basketball talent from the GTA. The players could push Canada to international basketball glory. Along the way, Thompson and his band of brothers are looking to parlay U.S. college fame into NBA fortune.
What’s behind this surge of sporting success?
A bus driver, a teacher, a project manager, a fraud investigator and an assembly line worker. They are the players’ moms: Suzette Cadougan, Connie Joseph, Nene Kabongo, Patty Pangos, Andrea Thompson.
This is a glimpse of five of the women who support the dream, who go on long road trips in the winter to watch their kids play, who spar with sports agents and college recruiters and fret about sending their babies thousands of kilometres from home for a chance at hoops heaven. It’s a Mother’s Day nod to the moms who stand and cheer when the crowds are gone, who will be there to hug and comfort their sons, should the dream die.
LEAVING HOME
The best GTA basketball players are voting with their feet. In droves, they are enrolling in U.S. high schools from Florida to California in hopes of landing a scholarship to a top NCAA school. Once on the college circuit, they’re in the pipeline to the NBA. Or so the argument goes.
There are two problems with the argument. First, the odds heavily favour failure. Second, sending their kids away is wrenching for mothers.
For Connie Joseph, the realization of what she had done hit home as the jet climbed over the Nevada desert, the Las Vegas suburb of Henderson receding below. The “baby” of her family — 16-year-old Cory — was now in the care of strangers far, far from their Pickering home. He was living in a big house with 9 players, overseen by a den mother, the wife of assistant coach Todd Simon.
Cory selected Findlay Prep for Grades 11 and 12 because of its basketball pedigree and their coach, Mike Peck. Connie, concerned about accommodating Cory’s form of dyslexia, chose Findlay for academics.
“The decision turned out great,” says Connie, whose older son, Devoe, had headed off to the University of Minnesota the year before. At Findlay, Cory hit his academic stride; he is an A student at the University of Texas this year.
And his play put him on the NBA radar. He teamed with Tristan to win consecutive national championships at Findlay, where both were named All-Americans and attracted enough attention to secure full scholarships to the University of Texas. Both players started every game as freshmen and are knocking on the door of professional basketball.
Andrea Thompson felt less anxiety: Even at age 10, Andrea knew Tristan was mature enough to care for himself. She would leave him in Brampton in the mornings with instructions to get his brother, Dishawn, then about 6, fed and off to school. He had a paper route. And on Saturday mornings he’d religiously do his household chores and homework so he’d be ready for basketball practice by noon.
Still, the move has meant Andrea racks up a lot of air miles tracking Tristan, always with 4-year-old son Amari at her side.
Jokes husband Trevor: “For her, Amari is like her credit card — don’t leave home without it.”
But the decision to go south does not sit well with all mothers.
Kevin Pangos, the point guard for Canada’s junior team, felt he needed stiffer competition against American players, not another year of banging against lead-footed career high schoolers in Newmarket.
But Patty Pangos figured the life of a prep school player is too closely aligned with college players and the pros. She wanted Kevin to enjoy his youth. The rigours of basketball as a job would come soon enough.
“I didn’t think he was ready last August; he’s ready now. You are a kid only once in your lifetime, so be a kid as long as possible. To me, that means till you are 18.”
The Pangos’ had options. They kept their promise to get Kevin extra shooting time in school gyms. They hired a trainer, strength and nutrition coach, paid for kung fu lessons and yoga. Patty drove him to University of Toronto for gym time. He trained with Canada Basketball. The only thing they couldn’t manufacture was top-flight competition.
“Was it a good decision, a bad decision? We’ll see,” says Patty. “But it was the right decision. He wasn’t ready to be on his own.”
The Recruiters
The fingerprints of some of college basketball’s iconic coaches are all over the living room of Connie Joseph’s tidy semi-detached house.
Connecticut’s Jim Calhoun, Tubby Smith of Minnesota, Villanova’s Jay Wright, Billy Donovan of Florida, Buzz Williams of Marquette, and Texas’s Rick Barnes have all come wooing her sons.
“It’s very tough call, deciding,” Connie says. In the end you “follow your heart.”
A battery of rules governs when college coaches can recruit a player, when they can talk, where and how often. Postal workers sag a little heavier when the scouts discover a prospect. Those who can’t make the trip north pile on the brochures.
“At first you think, ‘Wow, this is cool,’” says Patty. “But then it becomes invasive.”
By last summer Kevin was on the phone nearly every night, fending off and listening to suitors. To stem the flow, Kevin set an Oct. 6 deadline to choose a college. The recruiting game was keeping him from his training regimen.
He narrowed the field from Gonzaga, Notre Dame, Michigan, Cincinnati, Virginia, Boston College and UNLV. He needed a school where he would get playing time, learn from a senior player at his position, have a coach in a secure job and one he could relate to, and a team that had the clear potential to make it to the NCAA championship, featuring the top 68 college teams.
Kevin finally chose Gonzaga, home to several Canadian players. What tipped the balance? One of the players on Gonzaga is the son of NBA great John Stockton. Kevin has a free run of the Stockton home gym and, with it, tutelage from one of the best point guards ever.
The Mothers
With their sons dreaming of stardom in the U.S., saying goodbye is a common, if difficult, part of the women’s lives.
For Andrea Thompson, it is more than that — it’s a painful reminder.
She was left behind as a 2-year-old, with relatives in Jamaica. She cannot talk about the eight-year separation and the hard times — herding goats, feeding pigs, fetching water from the stream, washing clothes by the river, tending the store — without crying. “I was like nobody,” she says, tears welling.
“Now, they (her childhood tormentors) have to bow before me. Who God bless, no man curse!” Her laugh fills her 6-foot-2 frame, and the empty school bus as well. Andrea has been driving the bus for 14 years. For the past four years she’s taken the last of four boys, Amari, along with her. He suffers from a form of epilepsy. She soldiers on with the same warrior spirit she ascribes to Tristan.
She leaves home at 7:20 a.m. with Amari. Her day: school bus run; long break; bus run; travel back to Brampton to take Amari to afternoon kindergarten; hurry back for the evening run; and finally get home by 5 p.m; pick up Dishawn, now 15, from after-school; then housework till 9 or 9:30 p.m. when “I’m done; I’m tired.”
“Words can’t explain how hard she works,” says husband Trevor. “I haven’t really seen another mother to equal her.”
Nene Kabongo is a traditional woman in unconventional times. Being a good woman starts with being able to take care of the family, she says, not from looking in the mirror.
She speaks in aphorisms of her own making. And there is little room left for doubt.
“It’s what’s in you, not what you have, that makes you a good person,” she says, when asked about the chances of her son making the NBA as early as the summer of 2012.
“We can have a small piece of bread and share it and be happy. In life, if you can appreciate the small things, you will appreciate the big things. Take nothing for granted. Respect even the smallest things. Children know relationship is better than money. Where there is good relationships, money comes.”
She says all that without taking a breath.
We’re meeting on her lunch time. She hardly stops to eat. She has two jobs, the main one as an investigator for CIBC.
“I stop when I sleep,” she says. “Run, run, run, run, run . . .”
A dozen years ago the Kabongos lived in Congo. Dad, Mukendi, had a great job in the construction industry. Nene was an administrative assistant in an import-export company. She speaks Swahili, French, English. They drove a BMW. They had four servants.
But a faltering economy, toxic politics and social instability pushed them to move. “We couldn’t take it anymore. My husband said, ‘we have to leave. Canada is better for the kids.’”
Coming to Canada meant sacrifices. “I’m okay,” says Nene. “I’m not miserable. I’m not on welfare. My family, my husband and kids are here. We have joy and peace. The American way is to have a big, big, car, but no peace in the house.”
Nene was a slow convert to the virtues of basketball. She said she and Mukendi brought their kids to Canada to get a superb education, not play ball. And it took the persistence of coaches to convince her that Myck had talents that ranked him among the best in the world. (Sister Vanessa has a basketball scholarship at Delaware; youngest son Jonathan has shown basketball promise akin to Myck’s.)
In Chicago last March, Nene watched Myck handle a string of reporters at the high school All-American game and marvelled.
“Now, I understand what they mean. He’s so grown, like a man. . . but he’s still my baby.”
Patty Pangos is on the McMaster University wall of fame. A self-described “lousy shooter,” she was a rebounding terror.
She teaches at her son’s school, Denison Secondary in Newmarket. Husband Bill coaches York University’s women’s team. Daughter, Kayla, is on the team.
When they moved to East Gwillimbury, an hour’s drive north of Toronto, the couple vowed to stay involved with their kids. Both took part-time jobs to spend more time with the kids. If the area lacked a team or league where their kids might play organized sports, they started one.
Connie Joseph and David Joseph also have a basketball background: they met when both played for Mt. Royal College in Alberta more than 20 years ago. The basketball teams produced three couples — more than the number of championships won.
Connie played, coached and refereed at various levels. When Devoe and Cory arrived they not only had basketball in their DNA, they lived it around the house. David ran basketball camps all summer. (The couple, who also have daughters Chantal and Danielle, is now separated.) And when the boys came home they played in the driveway until dark.
“They just love the game,” Connie says.
Suzette Cadougan is easy to root for. Life has tossed her a few grenades.
On a still August night in 2005, a driveby gunman sprayed her Driftwood Ave. housing complex with bullets. Junior looked down to see his 5-year-old brother covered in blood.
One of the four bullets is still lodged in Shaquan’s lower body. Another ruptured blood vessels in the pelvic region; for six months the boy could not pee.
Spooked, Suzette sent 15-year-old Junior to the U.S. She relied on coaches like Ro Russell, founder of Grassroots Canada, an elite basketball program focused on getting U.S. exposure for GTA kids. Even as she feared losing Shaquan, she had to release her mama’s boy into the care of strangers. It paid off with a scholarship to Marquette, where he just completed his second year.
Like Andrea Thompson, it wasn’t her first tough separation.
Born in Trinidad, Suzette’s mom left her with a grandmother in St. Vincent as a baby. It would be 24 years before they were reunited — in Toronto. Suzette arrived with two children, Kerlon and Kedan. A marriage produced Junior, but his father, Carlisle, is long gone, back to St. Vincent. He’s never seen Junior play.
“I’m a single mom and I raised four children on my own. I deserve every credit in the world — all alone, working one job.” (On a climate control parts assembly line in Rexdale.)
“God has to be in the midst of that. I’m the umbrella for them (her children), sheltering them, praying for them, in season and out of season.”
The Lottery
It’s easier to become a brain surgeon or a rocket scientist than an NBA player. Of the thousands of players available, only 60 are drafted into the NBA each year. Only 30 get a guaranteed contract for the desired millions.
Tristan Thompson is on the crest of this dream. In six weeks, NBA commissioner David Stern could call his name as the highest drafted Canadian player in NBA history.
Cory Joseph and Myck Kabongo are considered near locks to make the NBA over the next three years; Cory could be drafted this year, while Myck is following in the footsteps of Tristan and Cory and will play at Texas next year after a tear at Findlay.
Junior Cadougan and Devoe Joseph are in the conversation. Kevin Pangos will evaluate his prospects, once he starts lining up against the top competition in the U.S. this fall.
“If he wins the lottery and goes to the NBA, great,” says Patty Pangos. “That’s the dream. Neither of us will ever squish that. But I want him to have in mind a career dream, not just a dream career.”
By that she means a Plan B — a college degree, paid for by their athletic prowess, so that there is a life after basketball, NBA or not.
Under the existing NBA collective agreement (due to expire, possibly leading to a lockout), the first pick in the draft is guaranteed $9.28 million over two years. The 10th pick gets $4 million, the 20th $2.4 million and the 30th pick, $1.8 guaranteed. There is a team option to extend this to five years, with annual hikes.
It’s the kind of money these families could use, some more than others.
“Dollars have to run, eh,” says Andrea Thompson, using a Jamaican colloquialism that means, essentially, you take the money and run.
“If you’re hot, you’re hot,” she adds. “If the NBA door opens, you have to enter. Why wait? College is always going to be open.”
It may not always be free, though. A scholarship, worth $50,000 a year at Texas, is a terrible thing to waste.
“A university degree? That’s big,” says Suzette Cadougan. “I couldn’t afford that. I am living paycheque to paycheque.”
Some 14 trophies decorate the tables of her very modest rented home in the Junction, including one that rises seven feet tall. But Suzette’s favourite is the one Junior brought with him last month. The inscription reads, “Standard of Academic Excellence — Marquette 2010-2011.”
Best among his teammates, Junior had taken his mom’s pleading to heart when she told him his hands are naturally made for ball, but that he should reach out and also grasp his books.
“I’m so happy for him I can’t express the feelings I have.”
The Letter
“Hi Mom, it’s your son . . .”
Junior Cadougan came home to Toronto for Easter last month — for some home cooking and a mother’s love. His letter arrived the day before. Suzette can’t finish reading it without breaking down . . .
“I just wanted to thank you for bringing me in this world so I could find success. Mom, I thank you for pushing me when I was young and keeping me out of trouble. The way how you brought me up made me turn into the man I am now.
“Mommy, I love you and I just wanted to let you know that I am working hard, so you will never have to work another day.”
Curtest of Royson James of The Star
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