Raptors Rookie Dalano Banton Is Making Rexdale Dream Big

“Drake’s house is huge.”

Banton still can’t believe he knows what the inside of the 6ix God’s mansion looks like. Shortly after draft night, he and Barnes received an exclusive invitation from the Toronto rapper and Raptors global ambassador, who wanted to give the players a proper welcome to the team. It’s a long way from Mount Olive to the Bridle Path.

“He talked to us about longevity,” he says of Drake’s advice to them. “You know, live in the moment, obviously, soak it up and be grateful for what you’ve accomplished, but also kinda worry about longevity and continuing to grind. He’s a guy that’s never satisfied regardless of how many hit songs he drops, so he was just preaching about never being satisfied. And said if I ever need anything, to hit him up.”

Banton’s NBA career officially starts at Wednesday’s season opener in Toronto, but regardless of how things progress from there, his legacy might already be set in stone. He’s the kid who clawed his way out of the Rex, put it on the map, made success seem tangible for kids across the city. Started from the bottom, now he’s got The Boy on speed dial.

What’s more, he may well be the most fully actualized Toronto man the Raptors have ever seen.

“Shriv, Mo Band$, Lil Bucky, Biig Slime, Northside Benji, Burna Bandz,” Banton says, rattling off the underground rappers from the city he listens to regularly. “I bump pretty much everyone from Toronto. A lot of people from America don’t understand our music, but I like it.” He believes the 6ix’s MCs get lost in translation with U.S. audiences. “People just think Canada’s so nice and this and that, so I feel like they’re not really understanding our culture, you know? And probably our accent—the way we talk and the words that people here use, they don’t really understand. It’s crazy, though, I feel like Toronto rap is blowing up, and it’s going to continue to get bigger.”

He’s fluent in Toronto slang and makes a point of teaching it to his teammates—though Barnes is more advanced in it than he realized. “I’ve been teaching him some words, but he knows a lot! I was like, ‘Whoa, who taught you that?’” says Banton. Of course, he isn’t ignorant to the origins of the dialect. “Scottie is Jamaican too, and we use a lot of cultural slang like ‘wa gwan’ and stuff like that. It’s not really just a Toronto thing. You know, Toronto soaks up all cultures easily, regardless of what ethnicity you are. We have Jamaican culture in the way we talk, so it’s easy for him to understand.”

I once asked Ujiri about the importance of people seeing their own kind succeed at things. The question was related to the Giants of Africa basketball camps the Raptors exec runs in his home continent every summer, but his answer could easily apply to youth anywhere in the world: “Kids have to see it. It has an impact. We have to be role models. They need to see someone and say, ‘He’s from here. He’s from our place. If he can do it, maybe we can try to do it.’ It’s huge.”

Banton is the hero Toronto’s inner-city kids need right now—someone who looks like them, talks like them, and bumps the same tracks as them, doing the impossible. After all, you can’t be what you can’t see. And the rookie’s ready to show us something.

“I want to be the blueprint of somebody who really made it out, made something of themselves, and took it to another level, not somebody who ‘could have been.’ I’m trying to change the narrative,” he says. “Just having that chip on my shoulder, being from somewhere where people don’t really come out of, I have to take it with me and put it on, so that everybody from there can follow in my footsteps. I want to continue to build not just Rexdale, but Toronto as a whole. I feel like I represent the whole city. I’m big on taking where I’m from with pride. I accept who I am and I love where I come from.”