Elijah Fisher is looking like the next great top Canadian basketball prospect. He’s not shying away from it. (Via VivekMJacob)
Coach Ro Russell sat in his Crestwood Preparatory College office captivated by what he believed to be a real possibility. Dad, Rohan, didn’t want his son to be a crash test dummy. Mom, Thelia, was just happy her son might be able to stay home.
The 2018 game featured current Duke star and Mississauga, Ont., native R.J. Barrett, who went to Montverde Academy, as well as Simi Shittu from Burlington, Ont., who attended Vermont Academy before joining Vanderbilt. Both were five-star recruits, so did they really need to go to the States to prove their worth?
“When he began to walk, I remember sometimes having to carry Elijah off the court saying, ‘Elijah, you can’t be on the court right now!’” “I showed him a lot of vintage clips so that he could incorporate some of the things that Michael was doing with his game,” Rohan said. “If you ask Elijah who he thinks is the best player, where a lot of the younger guys would say LeBron James because of the era they grew up in, Elijah would 100 per cent say Michael Jordan.”
And so, to work on Elijah’s skills they went. Practices before school began, Saturday mornings, Sunday mornings, evenings, didn’t matter. Form shooting and ball handling drills — whether with two balls or focusing on his weaker left hand — became so routine Elijah would come into the gym and get started without instruction if he was there without his coach.
As the intensity and fame grew outside the house, Elijah’s parents have made it a point to treat him just like they would treat any of their other four children. He has chores and gets grounded when he’s in the wrong and they know that, away from the court, he’s got a goofy, silly side to him. While dad may catch a movie or watch a TV show with him, mom bonds with her son over shoes.
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