The former head coach of the Toronto Raptors is planning to bring his dream of a professional basketball league to Guelph.
League sources confirm that Guelph is one of the locations planned for the Canadian Basketball League that is planning to begin play this winter.
Butch Carter fronts the league and they have reserved gym space at the new Mitchell Athletics Centre at the University of Guelph.
Accommodations have also apparently been tentatively arranged for players.
The other three teams in the league are based in Hamilton, Durham and Scarborough, all playing out of mid-sized university or college gymnasiums.
Carter has been trying to get the league going for a couple of years.
He had a booth set up at Guelph Ribfest recently promoting the as-yet-unnamed Guelph franchise and made a $1,000 donation to the Rotary Club. A name-the-team contest is planned.
Carter would not comment on the record, nor would local contacts identified as being connected to the Guelph team.
But a league source confirmed that a Guelph team would be one of four teams in the Canadian Basketball League that would start play in either mid-December or January.
Lease agreements for two of the teams were still in the works.
Teams would play a 30-game schedule under FIBA rules and be required to carry four Canadian players on their 12-man roster.
The season would conclude in March with a weekend playoff tournament.
The league source said teams will have to average 1,200 fans per game to break even.
A deal to have a game of the week shown on YES TV has also been arranged.
Carter tried to get the Canadian Basketball League going last winter but ran into difficulties when he couldn't secure proper facility agreements.
A proposed team for Waterloo fell through.
There have been various attempts to start professional basketball leagues in Canada, including the current National Basketball League of Canada, which has had mixed success over its five years. That league just added a team in Kitchener.
Guelph's previous foray into semi-professional basketball did not go, or end, well.
The Ontario Professional Basketball Association was started in 2004 by a group of Guelph entrepreneurs.
While the product on the court was of high quality, the league suffered and financially folded before the end of its first season.
The Guelph team in that league drew around 500 fans to games at the Mitchell Athletics Centre.
