Few Things
Canada has much better schools in poor neighborhoods. The public schools in inner city Tornont, where a lot of our stars are coming from are as well funded or better funded than the schools in rich parts of town. Teachers, admin, coaches can earn promotions by working with the disadvantaged. Where I teach if you have not taught at a school with most First nations 9indian) kids you are not getting promoted.
Basketball has resisted the urge to be competitive at early ages. My son is a good player at age 12 but in the winter he plays on neighborhood team, and I like most of the coah's teach skills abd don't care if we win. But the secondary part is elite kids have a lot of great options in the summer.
Basketball Canada has had two approaches
1. Get as many kids playing as possible. Don't set up road blocks likes tiering ten year olds, tryouts, etc at young ages. Grow the roots. They promote a lot of summer tournaments. 10 years ago the provincial basketball associations selected teams for summer championships, maybe 30 boys and 30 girls. Now they try to run a summer circuit of tournaments and pick the teams from the hundreds of kids playing. Plus Basketball Canada does not care if a kid make the provincial team, they evaluate the kids on their own.
2. Get the true studs together and coach them up. Wiggins et al have been at elite training centres for a long time. The focus is on athleticism, not just who is the best 12 year ol at left hand layups. My son can dunk on an 8 foot hoop at 5-4, age 12, and touch nine feet. He is far from the most skilled kid, but he has some hops and has been invited out to Sundays workouts, though we are usually at the rink. ut the reals top guys get flown to camps in the summer and play at high level for about a month from about age 15 on. These camps are timed to not conflict with the ABC and Nike camps south of the border.
3.Advise kids about school choices.This is where Rautins has been great. There are no rules about how much a national team can be involved in recruiting. Rautins has accumulated enough trust with the players and has enough talent in the pipeline NCAA coaches want his blessing with recruits. He makes sure guys are going to places they will play and get a fair shake, At one time a lot of Canadian kids went to shitty NAIA or NCAA places just to say they "went to the states." He has become a pretty big talent broker and coaches south of the border now want to treat Canadians players the right way. This includes the attitude towards playing for team Canada. At one time NCAA coaches told guys not to play for Canada. Now they want their guys there talking to the 16 and 17 years olds about coming to the same school.
4. Lastly the top Canadian schools play a lot of NCAA teams in the pres season and very good DIv 2, or NAIA and even Div 1 schools at Christmas. Ironically this has increased the number of good americans playing in Canada, but at the top level Canadian college ball is pretty good, though the depth is weak. The Canadian schools beating or competeing with those teasm and shit kicking the shitty schools has encouraged the Div 2 level kid to stay in Canada, where by graduation they have improved a lot more than they would have setting picks at Buttfuck state.