KANSAS CITY, Mo. Stephon Gilmore Jersey . - Every time that Stanford coach Johnny Dawkins heads north of the border and the subject of Canadian basketball players is broached, one name always comes up: Vince Carter.He was the star with amazing leaping ability for the expansion Toronto Raptors in the 1990s, doing things that many kids growing up in a hockey-mad country had never thought possible. Carter was a scoring machine, sure, but he did it with a certain flair that endeared him to youngsters.Now, those kids are starting to come of age.Led by Anthony Bennett and Andrew Wiggins, the past two No. 1 overall picks in the NBA draft, the Canadian pipeline has begun to gush with talent. Eight players from the nation have been picked in the first round of the draft in the past four years, a number made even more remarkable by the fact that very few players had even played in the NBA before the 1990s.You know what people up there tell me changed everything? They attribute it to Vince, Dawkins said. It inspired kids in Canada who used to play hockey to play basketball. More kids means more growth for the game, and youre seeing that spill into higher levels of the NCAA.Bennett was among those kids who grew up watching Carter with awe-struck admiration.The young Timberwolves forward learned the game around the Jane and Finch Boys and Girls Club in Toronto, and every once in a while the club would take field trips to Raptors games.Thats when we seen him doing all these types of dunks, Bennett said. We just had a love for his game.Bennett eventually moved to the U.S. and played high school basketball at Nevadas Findlay Prep. After one season at UNLV, he was chosen first in the 2013 draft by the Cavaliers.His path has become a familiar one for young prospects from Canada.While prep schools there are becoming better and better, and the summer AAU circuit gives them plenty of exposure, the best players still tend to head south for school. That includes Wiggins, the son of former NBA player Mitch Wiggins, who also grew up watching Carter in Toronto but wound up at West Virginias Huntington Prep for high school.Wiggins was so dynamic that he actually reclassified to graduate a year earlier, and was still the No. 1 prospect in the country. He ultimately went to Kansas for a year, setting several records at the tradition-rich school.Now, after he and Bennett were traded from Cleveland, they are together in Minnesota.Its been getting bigger and bigger every year, Wiggins said of basketball in Canada. Players started to get a chance to go to the States and go to prep schools down here.That has made it even easier for them to get on college coaches radars, and helps to explain why so many Canadian prospects have turned into first-round draft picks.Its certainly not like it was in the 1950s, when Ernie Vandeweghe arrived out of Montreal and played several seasons for the Knicks. Its not even like it was in the 1980s, 90s and early 2000s, when Bill Wennington was winning titles on Michael Jordans Bulls, and Rick Fox was winning championships alongside Kobe Bryant and Shaquille ONeal.Youre always fighting against hockey, said Sidney Lowe, who coached the Grizzlies when they were an expansion team in Vancouver. But the thing about the Toronto area is they withstood the tough times. Their support is unbelievable and the result is you see more kids from Canada playing basketball and making it to this level.Guys like Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph, first-round picks in 2011, and Andrew Nicholson, a first-round pick the following year. Bennett was joined by Kelly Olynyk in going in the first round in 2013, and Wiggins was joined by Tyler Ennis and Nik Stauskas this past spring.At the grassroots level, theyre extremely organized, Arizona coach Sean Miller said. You watch some of their teams on our travel circuit that we have here in the United States, their teams are participating in that. You can tell theyre very well coached.Arizona is among numerous high-profile schools pursuing the top-ranked prep player in the class of 2016, 7-foot centre Thon Maker. Duke, Kansas and Kentucky are also in the mix.His teammate at Ontarios Athlete Institute, five-star guard Jamal Murray, is considering Michigan State, Ohio State and Missouri. On the other side of the country in British Colombia, 6-foot-6 guard Jermaine Haley is looking at Louisville, Memphis and Gonzaga.Canada is producing good players and they seem to be more abundant than maybe in the past, said Arizona State coach Herb Sendek, who lured 7-foot-2 Jordan Bachynski out of Calgary a few years ago. Bachynski graduated last year and now plays professionally in Turkey.Theres very few guys that fall through the cracks anymore that are unknown, Sendek said. Those kids come down and play club basketball and schools have a way of finding out about kids. The good players in Canada, like Jordan and others, theyre heavily recruited.And the pipeline doesnt look like its going to run dry anytime soon. David Andrews Jersey . - The Clippers have signed guard Dahntay Jones to a second 10-day contract. Julian Edelman Jersey .J. Ellis have avoided arbitration, agreeing to a one-year contract. http://www.patriotsjerseysauthentic.com/Derek-Rivers-Super-Bowl-Jersey/ .S. - Nova Scotias Mary Fay guaranteed at least one more match and a shot at the Canadian junior curling championships final on home ice.(SportsNetwork.com) - Having lost consecutive starts for the first time this season, Toronto hurler Mark Buehrle watched on Tuesday as New York rookie sensation Masahiro Tanaka passed him for the major league lead in victories. Buehrle will now try to join Tanaka in the 11-win club on Wednesday and even the Blue Jays three-game series with the AL East-rival Yankees. The resurgent Buehrle picked up his 10th win of the season on June 1, but followed up with a tough-luck 5-0 setback to St. Louis six days later as he was charged with just one run over seven innings. The lefty then struggled a bit in a 4-2 setback to Baltimore on Thursday, allowing four runs on eight hits and a walk in 6 1/3 frames. The loss dropped Buehrle to 10-3 on the year with a 2.28 earned run average. "There were times I made a lot of mistakes, and they made me pay for them," Buehrle told Torontos official website, "and then I made a few good pitches, and they put the ball in play and got some base hits." Buehrle will need to avoid the mistakes tonight given his history with the Yankees. The 35-year-old has made 16 prior starts against them, going a mere 1-10 with a 6.02 ERA. Tanaka secured his major league-leading 11th victory with last nights 3-1 victory, settling down from allowing a solo homer to Jose Reyes on the games first pitch to shut down the Blue Jays for the rest of his six-inning performance. Tanaka struck out 10 batters and moved in line for the victory following Brett Gardners two-run homer off Toronto hurler Marcus Stroman in the third inning. Tanaka lowered his ERA to an AL-best 1.99 and he is second in the league with 113 strikeouts. "What hes done is remarkable," said Yankees manager Joe Girardi of Tanaka. "He has been a big part of our success this year and continues to grind out starts, make adjustments and give us distance. He wins." Derek Jetter and Kelly Johnson each had two hits and a run scored to help New York halt a two-game skid with its fifth victory in seven games. Mike Gillislee Jersey. The Yankees also moved to within 3 1/2 games of the Blue Jays for first place in the AL East. With Tanaka leading the charge, Toronto hitters fanned a total of 15 times on the evening en route to their 14th consecutive defeat at Yankee Stadium, the longest active streak by one team at a particular venue. Stroman allowed just two runs, but lasted only 3 2/3 innings while throwing 98 pitches in Torontos seventh loss in 10 games. "We had some good at-bats, we hit some balls hard early on, and then it just disappeared," Blue Jays manager John Gibbons remarked. "(Tanaka) pretty much shut us down. But hes good. Theres a reason hes doing what hes doing." New Yorks 14-game home winning streak over the Jays is the longest by one team over another since Toronto topped Baltimore 16 straight times at Rogers Centre from 2009-11. The Yankees hope to extend that run tonight behind Chase Whitley, who takes the mound four days after his 25th birthday. Whitley opened his major league career with four straight no-decisions, failing to pitch longer than five innings in any of those outings. However, the righty has improved on that in back-to-back wins, logging seven frames to beat Kansas City on June 6 before pitching 7 2/3 innings in a 6-3 win over Seattle on Thursday. Whitley held the Mariners to a pair of runs on five hits while striking out six to zero walks, giving him a 2.41 ERA heading into his first ever meeting with the Blue Jays. Toronto is expected to have center fielder Colby Rasmus back in the lineup tonight for the first time since May 12 as he returns from a strained right hamstring. Rasmus, hitting .222 with nine homers and 19 RBI in 37 games, made his sixth and final rehab appearance on Tuesday with Triple-A Buffalo. Cheap NFL Jerseys Wholesale Jerseys Wholesale NFL Jerseys Jerseys From China Wholesale NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap Jerseys ' ' '