In an east end Toronto gym on a Sunday morning, there are All-Star Saturday night dunks going down.
First, a quick East Bay dunk as a warmup, the ball scooped smoothly between Isaiah Hamilton’s legs, his left hand delivering it to the right for the slam. Then, a putback dunk made possible by a perfectly timed lob from his teammate Isaiah Clarke. The same restless energy that flows from Hamilton and Clarke skips over Brooke McLeod, who watches the two from the baseline, one arm hanging and the other resting on the basketball wedged at her side. She’s fresh from a summer competing for Canada on the global stage with young women already in Division 1 colleges.
If you weren’t tipped off by the stuffed trophy cases lining the school’s hallways, or the championship pennants hanging in rows four deep from the gym walls, you’d quickly catch on to the excellence of the young athletes in front of you by watching them do what they love best. High-flying aside, there’s an innate ease to the way the three athletes do everything on the floor. From the fluidity they move around one another as they get shots up, to the practiced shooting form they automatically slip into before letting the ball fly.
The competitive landscape they’re a part of is a crowded, ambitious one, even at this junior age. There has to be a firm sense of clarity in each athlete for how they’re going to stand out, what kind of game they’re going to excel at, and what sets them apart. But in this small gym their focus is fixed on the ball in their hands. It’s that ability to zero in and exist in the moment that makes Clark, Hamilton, and McLeod so good at what they do.
“In game, it’s really easy to move on from each shot, because now you’re on defence. It’s always the next thing,” McLeod says about her knack to stay in the competitive moment.
It might sound simple, but the ability to use the game almost like a reset cheat code is something the pros do. A meditative state granted by the demands of the game. It’s also incredibly apparent in McLeod’s play. She’s cool-headed, with an intuitive style of reading the floor she attributes, in part, to an early love of playing soccer.
“The sports are different but it’s really the same thing: spacing, people, knowing where to go and where to be,” she says.
She’s also not afraid to do the little things, like diving for loose balls, boxing out, and going up for offensive rebounds. Offensively she loves playing at the elbow, citing it as a great place to drive, attack and shoot.
Her confidence comes through in her reads, but also got a boost playing 20 minutes a game on a FIBA team she initially wasn’t invited to try out for, because of her age. An illness on the team cleared a spot for McLeod, and she was ready. As a result, she was playing up to 20 minutes a match and absorbing on and off-court habits from her college age teammates.
Back at home she carried over the lessons from international competition, but McLeod credits the enforcement of her own work ethic to her coaches and teammates and the environment they’ve created, “We’ve got a really great culture that always stays hours after practice — getting shots up and doing the extra things.”
“One of my fears is not being the best,” she says, “So thinking about what others are doing, that really drives me. ‘Cause I want to be the best and you can’t do that if you’re just sitting at home.”
Hamilton has also learned from players at a higher level, including reigning NBA MVP Shai Gileous-Alexander, who he’s worked out with a couple of times.
“They’re always working hard. They don’t take any rest,” Hamilton says of pros like Gilgeous-Alexander and Isaiah Evans, a Duke sophomore guard he’s also been in the gym with. “If they’re working out for an hour, that hour is 100%. That’s something people my age need to know. Or else you’re not going to get that game feel when you’re working out, and it’s not going to translate to the game.”
Hamilton has already been scouted by Division one colleges through the UANext Basketball Circuit at the 15U level, playing against some of the best across North America. After watching his explosive game performances it’s not hard to see why. He has bounce to spare and a surging first step, a good shooting feel, plus a strong handle and a knack for in-game flare that drives his team. Even in warmups, whether working on one-handed hooks, whipping half-court passes to Clarke, or scissoring his legs in mixed rhythms to nail his footwork, his focus is what drives him.
“It took me a while to have that short-term memory when it comes to basketball,” Hamilton admits. “Now I definitely have it. After a bad game it’s easier to reflect about the game, fix it, and move on. If you just let it sit in your head it’s going to mess up your next game, and that game’s going to mess up your next game. It turns into a slump.”
For Hamilton, things really started to click as a player in grade nine. Before that — and before he shot up to his current height — he wasn’t getting much game time, coming off the bench as the eighth man. It wore on him.
“It doesn’t feel good to not play. It was hard,” he says. “I was playing with a bunch of great, ranked players. But I wasn’t there yet.”
He switched teams in grade eight and had some honest conversations with himself and his family about what he wanted, and the kind of player he thought he could be.
“I definitely wanted to be that top player so I just set my mind to it. I was in the gym every day, working out, wanting to be one of the best,” Hamilton says.
Hamilton cites his talent and obsession with the game as the building blocks he uses to improve. He’s candid about what he’s good at, citing some particularly theatrical dunks as “nothing for him”, while being just as clear about where he wants to improve. “I definitely wanted to be that top player so I just set my mind to it. I was in the gym every day, working out, wanting to be one of the best,” Hamilton says.
Hamilton, like all of the players on the east-end Toronto court today, is decked out in head to toe Under Armour gear. “If you look good and feel good, you play good,” he says.
Asked to walk through his practice regimen and he knows exactly what he’s working on: ball handling, handling pressure, getting to his mid-range spots, and of course, shooting reps. As many as he can get, from everywhere on the floor.
“Staying consistent with everything that you do. Having a regimen with everything. That’s the success right there, staying consistent,” he says.
Like McLeod, Hamilton credits his teammates for providing the extra lift of encouragement when he needs it — waking up for early morning practices is not fun for anybody, let alone teenagers. One of those teammates is Isaiah Clarke. Hamilton and Clarke both play for Canada Elite (15U), on the UANext Basketball Circuit.
Clarke is quiet and thoughtful, with zeroed in patience on the floor as well as off. On it, he sets up Hamilton for alley-oop dunks, flipping him perfectly timed lobs, as well as jetting him cross-court passes that cut clean through the snarl of bodies crowding the paint. Off the court Clarke loves watching tape, as much of it as he can. There are plenty of pros who have a hard time with the precision and repetition of sitting through film sessions, watching themselves make the same mistakes over and over again, but Clarke doesn’t mind it at all.
“It shows me how to improve for the next game,” he says matter-of-factly.
That fine-tuning comes naturally to Clarke, who says he’s been serious about basketball since grade six. His frame and physical abilities have developed as he’s gotten older, but his humble perspective — something he attributes to his family — has stayed the same.
One of Clarke’s favourite players to watch is also Gilgeous-Alexander, but Clarke likes watching him for the way the OKC guard can manipulate the game. Everything from tempo, to offence, to the way he can seem to hypnotize defenders.
“It’s just pace,” Clark says of Gilgeous-Alexander, “his pace is calm.”
Like the others, Hamilton has received offers from American colleges to take his game to the next stage. A stage he’ll be ready for given his steady demeanour and firm sense of the moment.
Asked how he balances his aspirations for the future and the necessary day-to-day of an athlete like him working to make his mark, and Clark says simply, “The past is the past, and right now I’m just either on the present or on the future.”
The sensibility of the moment that Clarke, Hamilton and McLeod all share is more than a competitive edge. It’s a core trait that comes through in the way they play the game with precision and confidence, grit and joy. They know when to toggle from big picture to buzzer beater, and when it’s necessary to flex. Ultimately, it reflects a new generation of Canadian athletes who’ve pushed past old limits and are as sure of their direction and drive as they are dangerous on the floor.
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