Delano Banton’s family members were frantically texting each other in their WhatsApp group chat, trying to get a hold of him.
There were about 10 of them, and they were absolutely jubilant. Banton’s name was just called out on NBA draft night in July, selected in the second round by his hometown Toronto Raptors.
His uncle Kashane Dennis, watching at a draft party in Toronto, shouted “I called it,” while others were screaming with delight.
Banton, in Chicago with his mentor, was so overcome with emotion by the moment, his uncle said it looked like his nephew was about to cry when he finally reached him.
He was coming home to Rexdale, and to play professionally in the city where it all started for him.
Friends from his Rexdale neighbourhood, members of the Albion boys and girls club, and former teammates he spent hours with in the gym at the community hub were also celebrating.
Banton had just made history, becoming the first Canadian drafted by his hometown team.
To those calling him and sending him recordings of their reaction, this wasn’t just about making basketball history in Canada — this was also a significant moment for Rexdale, a neighbourhood in the northwest of Toronto that isn’t often in a positive spotlight.
This was one of their own, a kid who grew up at Kipling Avenue and Finch Avenue West, who learned to play the game on the outdoor nets at the Rexdale Community Hub and never forgot the people who supported him and fuelled his passion for the game.
“We never seen somebody make it to the NBA come from where I come from,” said Banton, who got so many messages that it took him almost two days to get back to everybody. “It doesn’t feel too far fetched for other people to do it (now).” This wasn’t just Banton’s moment. This was a moment for Rexdale too. “Rexdale shaped him in the way he plays basketball, his character, the way he talks. Rexdale is him,” says Michael Okafor, a former teammate. “If Dalano can do it going to the Rexdale hub, anyone can do it.”
SINCE HE COULD practically walk, Banton grew up at his grandmother’s home in the north side of Rexdale after getting dropped off by his father in the summertime.
Mount Olive Street is where he became immersed with his Jamaican heritage, falling in love with grandma’s cooking of jerk chicken and oxtail. She taught him how to carry himself inside and outside her home, and brought stability to his life, Banton says.
“He was always here,” Dennis says of their family home. “We were just going to open the door for him full time.”
The Rexdale neighbourhood was home for Banton, where all his close friends lived and eventually the area where he went to school. In his grandma’s basement is where he’d also started playing basketball as a kid with his uncle Dennis.
Dennis watched as his nephew not just eagerly play the game, but learn it too. Banton soon evolved from playing with mini nets in the basement, to spending hours across the street on the outdoor courts.
Dennis remembers the first time he saw his nephew dunk as they lowered the nets for the kids. Banton was so determined to flush it down when he jumped that he landed awkwardly, scraping his knee.
Banton laughed when asked about that dunk by the Star, pointing to a scar on his right knee that reminds him of that day. It’s when he first started envisioning himself in the NBA.
That’s also when Dennis knew Banton had something special. It eventually led them to basketball tournaments outside Rexdale.
JUST LIKE EVERYONE from Rexdale, Banton rode the 45 Kipling to get anywhere and everywhere.
From Mount Olive, it takes 42 stops to get to the nearest subway station. Banton said it used to take him 40 minutes to get to Kipling station.
“If you want to get out of Rexdale you have to take a long bus trek to whichever subway is closest,” says Yoosrie Salhia, a mentor of Banton’s who was with him in Chicago on draft night.
“It’s why a lot of people in that specific area of the city — that’s a lot of what they know. They stay there a lot of the time, they don’t go out exploring and that’s due to accessibility to the city. They don’t like that long bus ride.”
As Banton grew from five-foot-nine at the start of high school, to six-foot-six in prep school, to six-foot-nine in his final year at the University of Nebraska, the 45 bus served as a reminder to him of how far he’d come from Mount Olive to make his NBA dreams a reality.
It’s why he chose the jersey number 45 with the Raptors, to honour the long bus ride that everyone in Rexdale shares.
“When you think about the number 45, it’s the journey,” Dennis says. “That bus route took you everywhere you needed to go.”
BANTON WAS 16 years old when people started to notice his basketball skills. It was around the same time Salhia met Banton and coached him while he was attending Central Toronto Academy (formerly known as Central Commerce).
“He’s someone I can’t be more grateful towards. Having someone like that, growing up in the neighbourhood I grew up in, you need someone to help keep you on track. He was that person,” Banton said, when asked about his mentor Salhia.
“He would bring me to the gym, call me, tell me ‘come here, come here’ whatever he can to keep me from doing something I wasn’t supposed to do.”
As a former collegiate basketball player himself, Salhia saw Banton’s potential. Banton started to play for the Albion boys and girls club team (BGC) in the Rexdale community hub, just across the street from his grandmother’s home.
Salhia would have conversations with Banton that still ring true to this day about the need to sacrifice. Working in the neighbourhood for years, Salhia knew the barriers that were in the way for many of the youth.
In 2014, Rexdale was designated a priority neighbourhood by the City of Toronto. It’s an often neglected, under-resourced community that has been disproportionately impacted by youth homicides than the rest of the city.
The hub sheltered Banton and others as they spent days and nights there as teenagers. He volunteered his time with the kids’ camp as a counsellor in the summer and eventually working there as a basketball coach during the year.
Banton was coming to the hub for basketball but was gaining much more.
The team was under the same umbrella as the Albion Neighbourhood Services, where Salhia worked as a staff member. They called themselves the ANS Warriors, consisting of basketball talent from Rexdale.
The centre brought all of Rexdale together, from the north to the south, as well as Jamestown Crescent. Back when Banton was working on his craft at the hub, the gym was packed with local talent and upwards of 50 to 60 kids on a given night. These days, it’s been taken over by the daily vaccine clinics.
WHEN BANTON WAS in Grade 11, Salhia said he knew Banton could dominate in the NCAA, but scouts across the GTA weren’t taking serious notice.
Outside of the BGC team, he’d play with Can-Amera Basketball, which was a competitive club led by Salhia that took the best from Rexdale and travel to tournaments across the country.
Banton, now 21, was one of six players on the team who went on to earn a Division I scholarship at a U.S. college.
Okafor, the former teammate of Banton’s in Rexdale, credits Albion Neighbourhood Services for bringing them together.
“We’d go into the community centre and there’s food, games and a lot of people inside there that are family,” Okafor says. “It gave us a chance to tune into what we really wanted to do. Basketball and the community centre brought us together.”
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