The Wonderful Mysterious World of OVO Bounce

HOO the heck knew about this 2nd Annual OVO Bounce Tournament?

This weekend saw a lot of crazy stuff going down in the Greater Toronto Area - Caribana, bridges being taken out by drunken truck drivers, and boy band concerts. But the only one I'm disappointed I'm missing out on has got to be OVO Bounce - a week-long basketball tournament/festival leading up to OVO Fest. For those not in-the-know, OVO stands for October's Very Own - the name of rapper/crooner Drake's label, and OVO Fest has become an annual Toronto concert event featuring most of the hottest names in rap and R&B.

But the newest addition to the festival is what has me intrigued. From what I can tell as a far, far-outside observer, OVO Bounce is a 4-day, 8-team Pro-Am tournament held in the Ryerson University gyms, that features many of the biggest names in Canadian basketball. The tournament is a partnership between noted basketball fan Drake, and CIA Bounce, a Canadian Youth Basketball Development program that has been dominating tournaments stateside and pumping out NBA draftees for the last handful of years. Wiggins, Bennett, Ennis, Thompson and Bhullar all played for CIA Bounce, and were all involved in the Pro-Am that also included current Toronto Raptor Amir Johnson, Detroit Piston Brandon Jennings, and many more.

Drake in his happy place.

But what has me most intrigued is the general lack of promotion and attention the whole thing has had. There's no website, no social media accounts, no coverage by local Toronto stations, and not a single mention from any of the Canadian Sports Media Conglomerates (CSMCs), making it all seem very... mysterious. How was anyone supposed to find out about this, Aubrey? C'mon!

In fact, the best (and pretty much only) coverage of this year's event has come from the excellent Canadian basketball site On Point Basketball. Without them and their awesome twitter accounts, I likely still wouldn't know jack about this event.

And what basketball fan wouldn't want to know about it? Outside of golf, the idea of a Pro-Am event is not that popular here in Canada. But those lucky fans in the States get treated to quite a few, including the famous Drew League, where DeMar DeRozan seems to be a regular, and the Seattle Pro-Am hosted by Los Angeles Clipper Jamal Crawford. The style of basketball is reminiscent of streetball, with oops and deep threes being more crucial than defence, and the end goal being more about entertainment and camaraderie than actually winning (at least for the "Pros" anyways.)

If that doesn't sound entertaining as hell, then I don't know what does.

So listen up, Drake (I know you're reading!). Don't be selfish. Us basketball fans here in Canada want to be able to enjoy this tournament - here's your plan to spread this event around:

• Get this thing a proper website. Schedule, rosters, tickets - how do you not have this already? I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.
• Time to find a bigger venue. Ryerson looks nice, but the maybe 400 people in there look a bit crowded. 
• Invest in a couple webcams, and get this thing streaming online. Not all of us are in the GTA, and most wouldn't want to drive through it on the busiest weekend of the summer, anyways.
• ???
• Profit.

In the meantime, here are some highlights from the 2013 Inaugural edition of the event.