Professional basketball has come to Guelph.
The Canadian Basketball League officially launched the Wellington Basketball Club on Tuesday at a press conference and luncheon held at Cutten Fields.
The brainchild of former Toronto Raptors coach Butch Carter, the CBL is two years in the making and will consist of four franchises for its first year: Durham Region, Hamilton, Scarborough and Guelph.
"We came in to be part of the community ... to make the team a community asset," Carter said Tuesday.
Guelph plays its first game in Scarborough on Dec. 18 and its first home game on Jan. 15.
The Wellington Basketball Club will play its 12 home games at the new Mitchell Athletics Centre at the University of Guelph.
Most games are on Sundays. Tickets range from $5 for children under 12 to $29 for courtside adult seats.
The league plays by FIBA rules and has a roster of 10 players, four of who will be Canadian, Carter said. As of yet there are no local products on the Wellington team.
The league was supposed to get going last year but faltered. Carter, who said he has researched what he needs to do to be successful to death, feels the league can be successful.
"There's nothing about the CBL I'm afraid of. What I'm more afraid of is not being successful," Carter said.
University of Guelph Director of Athletics Scott McRoberts has been discussing the league with Carter for two years.
"It's not an easy thing to do - start a league like this," McRoberts said. "There are more naysayers than cheerleaders."
Whether the team can draw enough fans to finance the roughly $200,000 budget that each team has remains to be seen.
A few years ago a fledgling league called the Ontario Professional Basketball League didn't make it through its inaugural season, attracting less than 500 fans a game.
Carter said he has developed the league's model in part after the Ontario Hockey League, where it develops young talent while offering affordable family entertainment.
The league is financed primarily by Carter and his friend Bruce Helsel, a retired former top executive with Wells Fargo.
"You're going to burn some money in your first year," Carter admitted.
The league uses gyms rather than rinks, adheres to FIBA's strict drug testing policies, has a salary cap of $100,000 per team and shares revenue across the league.
The Wellington players are staying in Guelph apartments and a town house and the team practices four days a week at the ARC Industries gymnasium.
Carter said the players age from 17 to 26. They are ones that couldn't get into college, didn't want to go to college or had fledgling careers in college.
Plans are to show a weekly Saturday night game on YES TV.
Coaching the Wellington team, which is owned by Carter, is his former high school friend George Jackson, a high school coaching legend from Cincinnati.
Jackson said the players seem to be good, young, skilled players that "need to develop some consistency."
The league has had some early hiccups, including a web site that only became fully functional in recent days, and rosters have yet to be released (although the Wellington team web site does have a list of players).
"We fell short on some things, but we've got a lot to do," Carter said.
