CEBL Autopsy Report: Montreal Alliance
How did Montreal manage to be the worst team in the CEBL for a third consecutive season?
Record: 6-15 (4th) Team MVP: Chris Smith
Cause of Death: No Good, Very Bad Team
The Montreal Alliance came into the 2024 CEBL season looking to accomplish two things: not finishing the season at the very bottom of the league standings for the first time in their history, and; avoid becoming the first team to use their automatic playoff bid as Championship Weekend hosts to bump a deserving team out of the postseason. They failed on both accounts.
After nearly making it to the playoffs last year only to be derailed by late season injuries, the Alliance went for a soft runback approach, re-signing the team’s leading scorer in Ahmed Hill as well as hometown standouts Alain Louis and Elijah Ifejeh. The remaining two American import spots were filled with G League products in Jordan Bowden and Chris Smith in an attempt to add some more offense to the lineup. The team also brough back head coach Derrick Alston Sr., whose impressive resume features NBA experience.
There were signs that this would be another odd season in La Belle Province before the season even started, when the team announced that Alston would be late to take his spot behind the bench as he finished his season in Mexico, leaving McGill University head coach Ryan Thorne to cover for him throughout the first four games of the season. The Alliance went 1-3 in his absence.
While the trio of imports performed well – Bowden, Hill and Smith averaged 17.4, 16.2 and 15.8 points a game, respectively – Montreal struggled to get offensive contributions from their Canadian players. Though the Alliance gave up the second fewest points on the year, they were dead last in scoring. That was only compounded by the loss of Bowden to the NBA Summer League (though he would return to end the season), 1st overall draft pick Ismael Diouf to an NCAA transfer, and a number of injuries. Players like Curtis Hollis (fresh off an impressive CEBL debut for Vancouver), Devonte Bandoo (who had only played 2 minutes of professional basketball in the past 2 years thanks to injury) and Shaquille Doorson (whose Dutch nationality made him a tough fit in the lineup due to the team’s reliance on Americans and need to have two Canadians on the floor) were all brough in to fill the voids, but couldn’t dill the holes that were left.
Those losses would prove to be costly, as despite the team’s poor record throughout the entire season and their inability to put the ball in the hoop, and argument can be made that their season wasn’t as bad as it appears on paper. Of the team’s 15 total losses including the playoffs, 9 of them were by two possessions or less.
Thanks to their selection as Championship Weekend hosts, Montreal made their first playoff appearance in franchise history, at the expense of the Brampton Honey Badgers who finished ahead of them in the standings but were excluded from the postseason. Their reward as hosts was the opportunity to play against the Niagara River Lions, who finished the year atop the standings. In a shocking twist, the Alliance entered the fourth quarter of the game leading by 5, but a red-hot Khalil Ahmad took over in Target Time to secure a 78-75 victory for the road team.
Year after year, the Alliance continue to put together a roster that fails to excite, even on paper. The question remains, why? Or rather, how? Quebec has long been a hotbed for basketball in this country. Montreal is an international city that should be able to draw some of the biggest names in the league to play for them during the summer. Those two things should lead to the team having one of the deepest pools of players to choose from, yet the team hasn’t been able to make use of this apparent huge advantage. It’s one thing to want to build an identity around feisty defense and Quebecois pride, but at some point you have to realize that skill and talent will always reign supreme.
The Alliance have already named Jo-Anne Charbonneau as the new team President, and it will be interesting to see how drastic of changes she will be willing to make in order to shake up the team. Does Alston stay on as head coach? By finishing near the top in team defense, there’s a case to be made that his system – at least on one end of the court – works. There’s also not-so-secretly been a hope that he would be able to recruit his son, Derrick Jr, an impressive scorer at the NCAA, G League and FIBA levels, though that has yet to come to fruition – not to blame either father or son, sometimes things just don’t line up.
Regardless of what changes they make, they need to be drastic. In one of – if not the – biggest basketball markets in the country, the CEBL has rolled out a franchise that is just 17-44 throughout their first 3 seasons, hardly giving fans a reason to get invested. If the league wants to start making an impact on a national level, they’ll need the Montreal market fully behind them.