NBA player flaunts deep trini roots
T&T GuardianJamaal Magloire is a seven-foot-tall veteran Miami Heat NBA player with roots that run deep in Trinidad. His parents, Garth (originally from St James) and Marion (from Diego Martin), who both coincidentally immigrated to Canada in 1969, first met in 1971. The Sunday Guardian recently caught up with Magloire in Miami at a post-game interview at the American Airlines Arena. Since 2000 when he was first drafted into the NBA, the soft-spoken, university-educated Magloire has done the various teams he has played for (a total of some 600 games) and his parents very proud.
T&T should also be proud in that Jamaal keeps our flag flying high in the cultural circles by leading a Carnival band at the annual Caribana festival in Toronto. His band, the Toronto Revellers Inc, since first entering the competition in 2005, has become one of the premier masquerade bands in Caribana. In 2007 and 2008 they captured back-to-back Band of the Year titles. The band membership has also grown by leaps and bounds from its inception and membership has more than doubled—from four sections in 2005 to ten sections in 2009. Toronto Revellers 2009 presentation of Bacchanal in Rio cemented their reputation as a top-level band and saw the band widely featured in events across the city including appearances at CTV’s Open House and Caribana’s official launch event at Yonge-Dundas Square. Their goal for 2010 is to capture the Band of the Year title again with their most ambitious presentation to date, Disco Fever... ain’t no stopping them now, according to Magloire.
About his Trini-inspired Caribana band, he said, “It seems like an impossible workload for someone who spends most of the year on the road playing basketball. “I have a good supporting cast,” he said of the ten-section leaders who keep track of things when he’s in Miami or travelling. “They help me tremendously. This is a year-round project, though there are obviously peak times. The best moment is seeing all the hard work from the whole year put into action, when you see your creative costumes all in formation, you can say, This is what I do, this is my creation. I am so proud of my Trini roots and culture. As a matter of fact I was in T&T for this year’s Carnival.” According to his mother Marion: “We fell into the Caribana culture because that was one of the best ways to bump into people from home, plus you know how we Trinis love our bacchanal.
I used to push Jamaal in his stroller to go watch the parade, just so I could jump up and shake a leg. I guess that’s where he acquired his love for the culture. I thought at that age he was only interested in eating hot dogs and drinking sodas. But you know how our music is contagious!” Toronto-born Jamaal is a 2004 NBA All-Star where he totalled 19 points, eight rebounds, one steal and one block in 21 minutes and has scored in double figures on 221 occasions, including 27 games with at least 20 points in his NBA career so far. He certainly fills his size 18 sneakers! In addition to sponsoring and leading The Revellers, Magloire also has his own charitable foundation, runs summer clinics for underprivileged children in Canada and Trinidad and Tobago, sponsors five Ontario youth basketball teams and hosts a memorial basketball game in honour of his late brother Justin Sheppard.
