When Mark Starkey moved to Vancouver two years ago, he found no lack of talented players or hoops for scrimmages. But basketball on Canadian turf wasn't quite what he was used to.
"It was lacking excitement," said the 27-year-old former NCAA Division I basketball player.
Not like in his native Ohio, where basketball is a religion, LeBron James is a god, and high-school hoops make the highlight reel on the local news. Voters there even helped send a basketball-loving presidential candidate, Barack Obama, to the White House.
So Mr. Starkey imported a few elements of America's game.
Four months ago, he launched the Vancouver Metro Basketball League, a recreational house league where benches come with towels and Gatorade, and players wear uniforms and are sometimes profiled on the league website, with quotes obtained through post-game interviews.
"I thought of ways for the players to feel like they were going to be treated like gold," he said. "They feel like it's a pro-style environment, but really we're just old, washed-up ex-players."
Newcomers such as Mr. Starkey are helping to drive a hoops surge in Canada. Basketball is one of the country's fastest-growing sports for children aged 5 to 14, with participation rates rising from 14 to 19 per cent between 1998 and 2005, according to a Statistics Canada study released last year. It's also the fifth most popular sport among Canadian adults, behind golf, hockey, swimming and soccer.
While the Toronto Raptors and high-profile athletes such as Steve Nash have generated homegrown hype, league organizers attribute the increase mainly to immigration, as amateur athletes move to Canada from basketball-loving countries such as the Philippines and China.
"The growth of the sport has been very significant over the last decade or so," said Wayne Parrish, executive director of Canada Basketball, adding that the increase has been the most rapid among visible minorities.
The cross-cultural influence has been through the airwaves as well: from rap videos to Air Jordans to a hoops-loving president-to-be. And Canadian kids aren't immune to basketball's allure in popular culture, he said. Media coverage of Mr. Obama's three-on-three games during his election campaign helped fuel the fire - not to mention plans to install an indoor court at the White House.
"He's taken that coolness to a different level," Mr. Parrish said. "This is a president for the 21st century."
As with soccer - Canada's No. 1 sport for children - there are few financial barriers to the sport. "It doesn't take much in terms of resources to be able to pick up a ball and play," he said.
That was true for Ed Semira, who grew up in the Philippines playing hoops in streets and parks.
"It's in my blood," he said of his native country's national sport. But when he arrived in Toronto in 1974, he found only one Filipino men's league with a handful of teams.
Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, thousands of Filipinos immigrated to cities such as Toronto and Calgary, and they helped the sport grow. Now, the Phil-Can Toronto basketball league has almost 100 teams, with players ranging from 9 to 65, Mr. Semira said.
There are three other leagues geared to Filipinos in the Greater Toronto Area alone, he said.
"The Chinese group is also big," he said. "They're not as crazy as us, but the kids are all going into basketball, too."
The expansion of the sport has been so rapid that league officials struggle to book gym times, said Michael Reio, director of Basketball World Toronto, which operates leagues, tournaments and camps.
Timothy Costigan, chair of the Bay Street Hoops tournament in Toronto, says the annual corporate three-day competition has grown from eight to 70 teams since it began 15 years ago.
Last year, the tournament, which attracts lawyers and business execs, raised more than $225,000 for local charities. Twenty per cent of the money raised this year will go toward funding more grassroots basketball programs, he said.
"I think it's foreseeable that in this city, basketball will be more popular than hockey in the next 10 years."
In Vancouver, at least, the jury is still out.
While Mr. Starkey's league has quickly grown into 10 teams with 150 players, it may be losing a popularity contest with the Vancouver Canucks.
"If the hockey game is on, you'll notice that the numbers [on the court] will fluctuate," he said.
