Michael Linklater

Athlete (2022)

Basketball

Michael Linklater put a different spin on basketball. Hand it to his feet.

A quick first step made his offence explosive. A rat-a-tat-tat shuffle kept his defence abrasive. In the land of giants, a guard stepped forward.

Linklater had game face from the time he started playing basketball at age 12 on the outdoor court at St. Mary’s Elementary School. Shake and bake, that’s Michael.

From the Mount Royal Collegiate Mustangs to the United Tribes Technical College Tribes in Bismarck, N.D., from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology Trojans in Calgary to the Lakeland College Rustlers in Lloydminster, the challenge for his coaches was the same: How to balance their chalk talk with his creativity. Channel your energy, they told him, don’t force it.

A defining moment for Linklater came in 2010 at the Canadian university championship in Ottawa. The Saskatchewan Huskies were in a semifinal against the home-court Carleton Ravens, who had won the national title six of the previous seven years. With 46 seconds left Linklater hit a three-pointer, his sixth of the game. The Huskies won. A day later, Saskatchewan defeated the UBC Thunderbirds in the final for the first Canadian championship in the history of Huskies basketball.

Linklater played in the North American Indigenous Games in Victoria and Winnipeg and Denver. He played for seven seasons on the International Basketball Federation’s 3-x-3 World Pro Tour. He played for the Saskatchewan Rattlers when they won the title in the Canadian Elite Basketball League in 2019, the league’s inaugural season.

Coming soon is a brand-new outdoor court on River Landing, an initiative known as Hoist the Hoops that is led by Linklater. Linklater and an outdoor court. Figures.