Raptors’ Scottie Barnes dances with TikTok and YouTube stars The Basement Gang from Mississauga

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Published December 4, 2022 at 6:54 pm

the basement gang mississauga

Mississauga-based TikTok and YouTube stars, The Basement Gang teamed up with 2022 NBA Rookie of the Year Scottie Barnes to create a celebratory dance routine.

The Basement Gang rose to fame early in the pandemic with their energetic, joyful dances. The childhood friends Nick McDonald, Nate James and Kadeem Hemmings met attending St. Francis Xavier Secondary School in Mississauga. They started dancing together in 2016 but then left for school.

Living in the same neighbourhood again during the pandemic, they created a bubble and started dancing together in a family basement.

Posting their first videos in early 2020, they now have six million followers on TikTok and 180,000 subscribers and more than 30 million views on YouTube.

Known for interacting with fans, the trio recently teamed up Raptors’ Scottie Barnes to create a celebratory dance routine to use on the court.

The video, which went live on YouTube shorts, shows James, McDonald and Hemmings sharing dance moves with Barnes. The short video ends with all four dancing.

James said they are basketball fans.

As Canadians, and growing up in the GTA, we love basketball and get to see players on the court, but it’s really cool with social media that we can see players off the court, and their personality,” said James.

The clip is part of a new partnership between the NBA in Canada and YouTube Shorts to give Canadians “short-side” access to their favourite players.

“NBA and YouTube came up with this really cool partnership, and we got to meet Scottie and do some of our energetic dances, and he went along with it really well,” James said.

“He was really cool, for a 6 foot 7 dude, he danced really well,” McDonald agreed. 

Additional videos in this series will feature Canadian NBA players including cousins Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (OKC) and Nickeil Alexander-Walker (Utah Jazz), Indiana Pacers’ Bennedict Mathurin, Oklahoma City Thunder’s Luguentz Dort, and Dallas Mavericks’ Dwight Powell.

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