| Road opener a homecoming for new Canadian Dalembert |
For Samuel Dalembert, Canada is the land of second chances. It is the country where he arrived at 13, moving to Montreal with his mother from strife-torn Haiti. It is the country in which young soccer-playing Sam first picked up a basketball.
It is also the country in which he played last night with the 76ers against the Toronto Raptors in their NBA season opener. Dalembert was on the road and at home at the same time.
Born in Port-au-Prince, the Sixers center was sworn in as a Canadian citizen Aug. 10 and was immediately cleared to join the Canadian National Team to participate in the Olympic qualifying tournament that month in Las Vegas. He intends to play again for his adopted country in next summer's 12-team wild-card tournament, from which the top three finishers will earn berths in the Olympics in Beijing.
"This is a special game," he said before last night's game 106-97 loss.
It also was special after missing so much time with a stress fracture in his left foot, which was diagnosed in August. He practiced sporadically during training camp and appeared in only the first of their seven preseason games.
As inconsistent as he can be, he remains a major piece to the Sixers' puzzle. He averaged nearly a double-double (10.7 points, 8.9 rebounds. 1.9 blocks) last season and was the only member of the team to start all 82 games. Over the final 50 games, he averaged 11.6 points, 9.7 rebounds and 2.06 blocks.
Last night, he scored four points on 2-for-8 shooting and grabbed six rebounds.
He spent 3 years in Montreal, enrolled at St. Patrick's High in northern New Jersey, then moved on to Seton Hall for 2 years before being drafted by the Sixers.
"He said he feels Canada gave him a second chance," said Leo Rautins, the former Sixer who coaches Team Canada and is a Raptors TV analyst. "What he saw in Haiti as a child, the poverty and violence, no child should have to see. He told me one day, 'After what I've seen in Haiti, do you think any NBA player can intimidate me?' "
Rautins hoped "Sam gets an enormous response" from the Air Canada Centre crowd. As it turned out, the response began at the morning shootaround, when Dalembert was swarmed by the Canadian press corps. A second wave surrounded him in the pregame locker room.
"There were many, many people up here who were really excited when he got his citizenship, played for our team and made it clear he really wanted to play," Rautins said.
It was, Dalembert said, "a place that felt like home."
Team Canada needed him. The Sixers need him just as much.
"Sam is Sam, and once you get him in basketball mode, oh my God," the Sixers' Andre Iguodala said. "He's going to be a tremendous help to us. We've just got to get him in basketball mode. I don't think he's quite there yet. With him, we've got a force inside. I can get beat [defensively] and not worry about my guy scoring, and that's a huge advantage . . . If he doesn't play, we're in trouble. We've just got to get him in sync with everybody else."
Said teammate Kyle Korver: "I know he has taken his time to make sure he's healthy, but having him back in the middle just changes the whole thing-offensive rebounds, blocked shots, defensively. He just gives us a presence that none of us can come close to matching." *
Used courtesy of: Philadelphia Daily News |
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