Andre De Grasse has spent the better part of the last decade being introduced as Canada’s fastest man. Next week in Los Angeles, that title will be mostly irrelevant. There will be no starting gun, no lanes, and no carefully choreographed warm-up routine. There will, however, be a jump ball.
De Grasse is set to play in the NBA All-Star Celebrity Game on Feb. 13 at the Kia Forum, opening All-Star Weekend. It will be his second appearance in the event, and a reminder that before sprinting took over his life, basketball was the plan.
Yes, really.
Before the spikes, there were sneakers
De Grasse grew up in the Greater Toronto Area playing basketball seriously enough that track wasn’t even the obvious choice. He competed in high school at Father Michael McGivney Catholic Academy and later at Milliken Mills High School, where he faced off against Andrew Wiggins, then a rising star at Vaughan Secondary School.
Track came later, almost accidentally, after Tony Sharpe, founder and head coach of Speed Academy Athletics Club, convinced him to give sprinting a try. That experiment worked out reasonably well. De Grasse went on to win seven Olympic medals, including gold in the 200m at the Tokyo Games in 2021 and another gold as part of Canada’s men’s 4×100 relay team in Paris in 2024.
That relay win tied him as Canada’s most decorated Olympian, a phrase he will almost certainly not hear announced over the loudspeaker at the Kia Forum.
He’s done this before and he wasn’t bad
This won’t be De Grasse’s first time mixing it up at All-Star Weekend.
He played in the Celebrity Game in 2018, back when he was “only” a three-time Olympic medallist. That night in Los Angeles, he scored 17 points and grabbed six rebounds for Team Clippers, proving that his athleticism translated reasonably well to a sport that involves a lot more lateral movement and a lot less running in straight lines.
Even with Olympic golds and relay anchors to his name, De Grasse has never fully drifted away from the game. Each year, he hosts the Andre De Grasse Holiday Classic Basketball Tournament in Markham, a charity event that supports the Andre De Grasse Family Foundation and brings young players onto the court.
For one night in Los Angeles, the stopwatch won’t matter. The medals will stay home. And one of the fastest athletes on the planet will see how his speed holds up when everyone else is allowed to change direction.
