Coach Jay Triano tells a story how in 2016, everyone on Team Canada was on a bus up early to go to practice, everyone but 17-year old SGA— “We’re going to show young fella you can’t be late for a bus,” Triano thought. Turns out SGA was already there at the gym, working out for hours with Steve Nash.

story by Danny Chau

There is a story that Canadian basketball lifer and former men’s national team coach Jay Triano likes to tell about Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

It’s a July morning in Manila, 2016. Team Canada is in the Philippines for the Olympic Qualifying Tournament. The entire roster is on the team bus, bright and early, headed to its first practice.

Everyone but Gilgeous-Alexander, a surprise inclusion as a 17-year-old rising senior who was months away from committing to Kentucky: a teenager on a team full of grown adults—including Tristan Thompson, who’d just won an NBA championship with the Cleveland Cavaliers a few weeks prior. The youngster soon to be known as SGA was nowhere to be found.

“OK, let’s go,” Triano, then in his second stint as the head coach of the national team, told the driver. We’re going to show young fella you can’t be late for a bus, Triano thought.

As the team got off the bus and stepped onto the court, Triano saw Shai already working out with national icon Steve Nash, then the Canadian men’s national team general manager.

“I guess Steve had woken him up and said, ‘Come on, you’re not playing a whole lot. Let’s go to the gym,’” Triano told The Ringer last week. “And they spent a couple hours in the gym before we even got there for our practice. And when Steve takes an interest in somebody, then he believes in that guy.”