Drake wants pro women's basketball in Canada — and key sport influencers do too
CBC
Last week, Canadian basketball player Bridget Carleton tweeted that she's "officially started manifesting a Canadian women's professional basketball league in the near future."
On Wednesday, Drake wrote on his Instagram story: "@WNBA I need a Toronto team."
It's probably a coincidence — unless manifestation truly works.
And besides, Carleton's wish was for a full pro league, while Drake called for one WNBA team.
"I mean, I'll take both," Carleton said in an interview with CBC Sports on Wednesday.
Carleton, 24, starred for Canada at her first Olympics in Tokyo, but the team failed to advance past the group stage. The Chatham, Ont., native also played in all 32 games for the Minnesota Lynx in the 2021 WNBA season, starting 10 and averaging 4.8 points per contest.
She's currently back home in Ontario ahead of a national team training camp in Toronto next week.
The return home is an opportunity to breathe for Carleton, who estimates she had three-to-four days off after Tokyo before returning to Minnesota, and then another four or five days after the WNBA season ended before heading overseas to join her Israeli club Ramat Hasharon.
"It's hard. We're away from our families for months on end and missing holidays, Christmases, birthdays, weddings, like anything you can name. It's hard being away from family for that long. It's just mind blowing to me," Carleton said.
"In 2015 I graduated high school and since then I played, I counted like six games in Canada, which is shocking."
Carleton played in France last season, but chose to return home mid-campaign amid the weight of the pandemic and a heavy lockdown in France that prevented her from exiting a one-kilometre radius around her home.
One pro of playing in France is the abundance of Canadians across the Ligue Féminine de Basketball. Not only does that provide familiarity in unfamiliar surroundings, but it's a chance to build a national-team rapport ahead of big tournaments like the Olympics.
That effect is even greater for French players in the league, who play with and against each other throughout the winter months. France is ranked fifth by FIBA (Canada is fourth), but won bronze in Tokyo.
"For us Canadians, we're all throughout the world. We're dispersed kind of everywhere. We have players playing all over the world. Obviously NCAA as well. But I think that's kind of what sparked that thought and more recently, why that has kind of been on the forefront of people's minds," Carleton said.
