A Brief History of Canadian 76ers

Curiousity got the best of me today. Fortunately, the ever-helpful Mr. Google was there to satisfy my itch to find out about Canadians that have played for the Philadelphia 76ers. Why did I need to find this bit of useless information out? I don't know, same reason that your shoes stick to stadium walkways... it's simply a mysterious facet of life that you have to deal with.

Anyway, I searched "Canadian basketball players" and got this page from Wikipedia, which lists anybody who was/is relatively famous in the basketball circles in Canada. I zipped through list of 86 Canadain basketball players, clicking on each link to skim through each bio, and found that I'd never heard of most of the guys on there. The first name that jumped out at me, however, was the one and only Sixers' starting center for 2007, Mr. Samuel Dalembert. The trick with him is that he was born in Haiti, but apparently played basketball at high school in Montreal, Canada. So, does that count? I'll let you be the judge.

Of course I came across Todd MacCullough, a Sixers center from 1999-2003. His playing career was unfortunately cut short, but one of his claims to fame was having been born and raised in Winnipeg, Canada. He had a nice touch on his shot, but otherwise kind of slid under the radar during his brief career.

A few other Canadian gents played for the Sixers at one time or another. Here's the list of players I found:

-Rowan Barrett: Rowan was on the Sixers' squad in 1999. (Sorry, I couldn't even find any other information on what he did on the Sixers... must not have made much of an impact)

-Olu Famutimi: Well the information on Olu is pretty much as thin as it gets. Apparently Famutini, from Toronto, played in Sixers' training camp in 2005. So, umm, yeah, that's about all I got on him.

-Leo Rautins: Rautins (pictured) was drafted by the Sixers in 1983 out of Syracuse University with the 17th pick. In 28 appearances during his only season with the Sixers, Leo popped in 48 points, roped 29 assists, and pulled in 33 rebounds as a 6'8" forward. In 1985 he played for the Atlanta Hawks in four games. He then skipped off to Europe. He is now the coach of the Canadian national basketball team and can be heard as an analyst for the Toronto Raptors. Of note, Rautins has undergone 14 knee operations at the time of his retirement. That's one knee surgery for every two NBA games he played. Ouch. Also of note: his son Andy now also plays at Syracuse. Hopefully his knees fare better than his pop's set.

Well, that's a brief history of Canadian 76ers. Six Sixers (that I could find, at least) hailed from Canada. Don't you feel a bit more wordly?