Journeyman, Part 3: The Spark That Built Me

What does it mean to be a journeyman? In basketball, it’s a player who travels from team to team, or even country to country, chasing the game they love. But being a journeyman is more than that—it’s about resilience, adaptation, and finding a sense of home no matter where life, or in this case, basketball, takes you.

Olu Ashaolu’s story is one of movement—across continents, cultures, and courts. From his early years in Nigeria to his family’s transition to Canada, from the grind of college basketball to the realities of playing professionally around the world, this series dives into the highs, the lows, and the lessons learned along the way.

This is Journeyman, a look inside the life of an athlete who has seen it all.

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In the early '90s, in Toronto, if you weren’t lacing up skates or slapping around a puck, you were on the outside looking in. Hockey wasn’t just Canada’s sport—it was part of our national identity. On any given Saturday morning, while driving around the city with my mom, we’d see kids bundled up in full gear, playing street hockey in subzero temperatures as if it were nothing.

Not me. I wanted no part of it. Spending hours outside chasing a puck through freezing cold? It never made sense. Hockey never stood a chance with me.

Basketball found me in quieter ways. On Sunday afternoons, we’d rush home from church, change out of our “church clothes,” and crowd around the one TV in the house for NBA doubleheaders on NBC. Bob Costas, Ahmad Rashad, and the late, great Bill Walton were often on the call. And that iconic theme music? Yeah—it still hits.

College hoops was always on, too, thanks to my brothers. At first, I didn’t totally get it. The game looked different. Guys wore T-shirts under their jerseys, some teams didn’t even have names on the back, and the arenas didn’t have the same flash as the NBA. But in March, everything shifted.

Around March Break—the Canadian version of Spring Break—the energy picked up. We had games on constantly, from morning to night. Brackets got passed around, and every win or upset felt like the world stopped. That’s when I realized: this wasn’t just college basketball—it was March Madness.

Back then, basketball was something I played casually—during recess, gym class, and lunch, like most kids. In the summers, I’d tag along with my brothers, John and Sam, to the local high school and sit for hours while they played pickup in the heat. That blacktop was its own universe—1s and 2s, call your own fouls, first to 11, win by 2. Arguments got settled the old-school way: “shoot for it.” That’s where the seed was planted. No glitz, no glam—just the game, played raw, loud, and honest.

Then in 1995, Toronto finally got an NBA team—the Raptors—and with them came a jolt of excitement. Suddenly, every kid wanted to be like Damon “Mighty Mouse” Stoudamire. But I was taller than most, so I gravitated toward Marcus Camby—the young big man with crazy length and bounce. Basketball in Toronto was just starting to bloom—and so was my love for the game.

Here’s the twist, though: my first organized sport wasn’t basketball—it was baseball. One summer, I randomly signed up for a local league, and to my surprise, I turned out to be a natural. I pitched, played first base and centerfield, and hit for power. I made the team and stuck with it for two seasons. That same year, I joined my sixth-grade basketball team. And while the spark for hoops had started to flicker, truthfully, I was still counting down to summer, itching to get back on the diamond.

Then we moved, about 15 minutes outside the city. New neighborhood. New school. New youth basketball league. I joined just to stay active—but once I got there, it hit me: I was behind. There were real ballers in this league. If I wanted to keep up, I had work to do.

That summer changed everything.

My brother John had just finished his freshman year at the University of New Orleans, and each morning, before her 7 a.m. shift, my mom would drop us off at the YMCA. John would go through his college-level workouts, and I’d be his rebounder, tracking makes and misses. Then it was my turn. He’d run me through drills before the afternoon pickup games started, where local college guys, pros, and high school talent would show out.

I wasn’t ready to run with them yet, but I was watching, absorbing, and falling in love with the process. I’d shoot between games, pick up the rhythm, the footwork, the language of basketball spoken in real time by guys chasing something bigger.

Over time, the game became more than just a pastime. It became a proving ground. I started to crave those early mornings. I tracked my own progress. How many left-hand layups could I hit in a row? Could I finally get through a full ball-handling circuit without losing the ball?

That summer marked a shift. I wasn’t just showing up anymore—I wanted to become a player. I wanted to close the gap between me and the guys ahead of me. I had height, but I wasn’t polished. I had to catch up. And fast.

The gym became my second home: the repetition, the routine, the focus. A spark was lit. There were no crowds. No highlights. No social media. Just a kid grinding, chasing the game.

And in those quiet hours, a spark was lit and the foundation was laid.

That’s when basketball stopped being just a game.

That’s when it became everything.

Little did I know then that the game I fell in love with as a kid would become a central thread in my life.

That spark set off a journey built on grit, belief, highs, and lows.

From church clothes to morning workouts with my brothers, to college ball and eventually playing professionally around the world…

Basketball didn’t just take me places.

It made me.