Toronto native Zach Edey’s rise to the top of the U.S. college basketball world was an unlikely story.
Edey, the star centre for the Purdue Boilermakers, was late to the sport, spending much of his youth in Toronto’s Leaside neighbourhood playing baseball and hockey instead.
It wasn’t until he entered his mid-teens that he took a serious interest in basketball.
“I think we got him at 15 or 16,” said Vidal Massiah, executive director of the Northern Kings, an elite Toronto-area basketball academy that has helped many Canadians reach the NCAA.
“Obviously kids started at six or seven years old, you know, in terms of reaching the level that Zach's at. It takes that much time and investment.”
Now, just a few short years later, the 21-year-old, seven-foot-four senior is a reigning player of the year who hopes to take the top-seeded Boilermakers on a deep tournament run one year after being upset in the first round.
Purdue plays its first tournament game at 7:25 p.m. on Friday.
“This is a remarkable story to take all those skills developed through other sports, transfer them into basketball, and then just start excelling (by) having a great work ethic and really a great mind,” Massiah told CP24.com.
Edey was first discovered by Massiah’s sister at a Leaside High School basketball game at the University of Toronto.
“She took a quick picture of Zach at the foul line, sent me a picture,” Massiah said.
“My nephew approached him after the game and said, ‘Hey, what's up? What's your name? What's your number? My uncle's going to change your life.’”
But Massiah said after he reached out to Edey’s family, he didn’t hear back for months.
‘We found this unicorn’
When he did finally get Edey out for tryouts for the Northern Kings program, he was quick to share his assessment with the teen’s parents.
“I think in a couple of years he'll be in the NBA,” Massiah told them. “That's kind of where everything started.”
He said what initially impressed him most was Edey’s pure athleticism.
“If you see Zach skate or pitch, you'd be floored. You’d be floored by how athletic he is,” he said.
In the beginning, Massiah said, only a handful of people truly saw Edey’s potential.
“I remember sitting in my truck for like an hour or two texting all my coaches like how excited I was that we found this unicorn,” he said.
“I was over the moon. I thought we had discovered the biggest thing.”
He said others were skeptical given how new he was to the sport.
“That's why people weren't buying into him,” he said. “Just the time needed for him to get to the level where coaches would imagine him being workable or serviceable.”
Some who coached Edey in other sports during his childhood used to joke about getting him into basketball but said he just seemed interested in other things.
“A lot of the players would suggest that he get into basketball and why was he playing hockey,” said Mark DeCiantis, owner of Golden Glide Hockey, where Edey spent several years developing his on-ice skills.
“I'm sure at a young age you want to play hockey like everybody else in Toronto.”
Edey was about seven years old when he started at the hockey school, DeCiantis said, noting that he was roughly about five-foot-four at that age.
“He was exceptionally tall and I mean, that worked in his favour obviously on the ice,” he said.
DeCiantis said he believes it was around 13 that Edey lost interest in hockey, focussing more of his time on baseball.
“He was a great kid,” he said. “Always a pleasure to be around.”
‘He didn’t really try out’
When Leaside High School teacher Amit Latchmiah first saw Edey in his Grade 10 Phys. Ed. class, he said he immediately wondered how he was going to get him on the school’s junior basketball team.
“He didn't really try out. He was on the team automatically,” Latchmiah told CP24.com.
“And then I found out that he plays baseball and hockey and that the Grade 10 year was the first time he was actually playing basketball.”
Latchmiah described Edey as a “quiet leader” who “excelled at every activity” and was also quick to help his classmates.
“We ended up making the finals that year but we ended up losing because I've never seen a team guard him (like that),” he laughed.
“They triple teamed him and he didn't have the ball.”
He said when the decision was made for Edey to leave Leaside to further his basketball career at the IMG Academy in Florida, his teammates were disappointed that they would have to carry on without him.
“They knew that was a big loss,” Latchmiah said. “The team I think did struggle the following year.”
In Edey’s first year at the IMG Academy, Massiah said he too struggled to make his mark and impress the coaches.
“That first year was kind of him adjusting, adjusting from being away from home and being more independent and there wasn't much basketball success to be honest in that first year,” he said.
He said when Edey came back to Toronto that summer, he trained every day in preparation for his second year at IMG.
“When he got back there, he had to fight for that first week to make (the national) team.”
He said it was then that the coaches at the school began to see Edey as a “real prospect.”
“And then that's when the schools really started to kind of get more involved,” he said.
Purdue was a ‘perfect fit’
Massiah said he always hoped Edey would wind up at Purdue.
“I thought Purdue would be the perfect fit because they do have a long-standing tradition and history of actually recruiting and playing through with very large athletes,” he said.
“I was afraid that in another school or situation, that can kind of be a novelty where a coach can kind of say I've got this really good kid, but you have no interest in really using him for what he is.”
And Edey has proven to be a good fit at the Big Ten school, setting Purdue’s career scoring record just last week.
Massiah said he feels Edey was, in part, motivated by the naysayers and coaches who didn’t believe he could become an elite player.
“I'm sure they’re kicking themselves in the butt because he was available to everybody and no one wanted to hear the story, just looking at this unfinished product,” he said.
“But his story was everything. His story would have told you where he was going.”
