Long before he became the commissioner and CEO of the Canadian Elite Basketball League, Mike Morreale was laser-focused on playing professional football.
To the Hamilton native, that meant playing in the Canadian Football League.
As a teenager, Morreale received interest from universities in the United States and throughout Canada.
Morreale felt that to accomplish his goal of turning pro, he would be best served by choosing a school that offered playing time right out of the gate.
Ultimately, Morreale found the opportunity he was looking for in his own backyard. He made the decision to attend McMaster University and went on to have an extremely successful playing career as a slotback for the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and Toronto Argonauts.
Morreale, now 50, sees many parallels between his experience and the up-and-coming Canadian athletes who aspire to play professional basketball.
With the likelihood of playing in the NBA being far-fetched, he sees both Canadian universities, which use FIBA rules, and the CEBL – in its own right a professional FIBA league – as a gateway for players to find jobs in top FIBA leagues around the world.
“If you want to be a professional basketball player, everybody should understand that the ability to play in the NBA is a very limiting one, but it doesn't mean you can't carve out a tremendous career playing overseas, FIBA basketball,” said Morreale.
“To do that, you need to learn the FIBA game. If you go to the NCAA, you're not going to learn this game and maybe you're not going to play until your second, third or fourth year. To me, playing was way more important than going to a (strictly) winning institution.”
The CEBL, which requires each team to fill the majority of their roster (six of 10
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