The Yukon’s Basketball Star

Manus Hopkins is a Whitehorse- and Toronto-based journalist, musician and lover of heavy metal and cats.

Canadian Basketball Hall of Famer Dikran Zabunyan has been all over the world, but he calls the Yukon home

Dikran Zabunyan is all about teamwork. Whether it’s a basketball team or the staff at a hotel he manages that he’s talking about, his team spirit is always there. Growing up in Turkey (and later in Toronto), he was encouraged by his parents to get an education in case he didn’t end up making it in professional basketball. He decided to pursue hotel management but still managed to play professional basketball overseas through his 20s.

He later moved back to Canada and on to coaching, forming the Rose City Express Pro Team in Windsor, Ontario, when he got a resort-management job there, in 1994, and later moved back to Toronto and renamed the team GT (Greater Toronto) Express, in 1999.

“The Raptors didn’t exist then,” Zabunyan said. “We were the only professional team in Canada.”

Zabunyan headed the team until 2006, winning multiple championships, then decided to move up to the Yukon for a change of pace and a new adventure. He became the vice president of Yukon Basketball, and he continued moving around to various hotel-management and coaching jobs around the country, before ending up back in the Yukon again. He currently resides in Carmacks, managing the Hotel Carmacks.

In 2019, Zabunyan was notified that he was being inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame.

“It was very humbling for me,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting it.”

Zabunyan is happy he took his father’s advice to find a fallback career, and he said that the best thing about his life right now is that he works for great people. He suffered a heart attack in 2018 and has been taking things slower, looking after his health, while still working in a field he enjoys.

When it comes to coaching, Zabunyan feels that it is his duty to pass on his basketball skills to the younger generation.

“I think I owe it to the game, to give back,” he said. “And also, being a manager of hotels and resorts has taught me how to transfer that to the game of basketball, or vice versa—it’s a team game. You’re coaching and mentoring employees or players; you’re setting standards, not rules. You do the same thing in the hotel business. It’s the same in the game of basketball, especially at the pro level. It’s my passion.”

Zabunyan’s most-recent head coaching post was at Mark R. Isfeld Secondary School in Courte-

Dikran Zabunyan currently resides in Carmacks

nay, B.C., where his unheralded Senior Boys team advanced to the 2020 AAA B.C. Provincial Tournament and finished with an overall record of 19 wins and 15 losses. During his 24 years as a head coach, Dikran compiled a record of 616 wins and 315 losses (498 to 237 Pro, 29 to 28 College and 89 to 50 High School).

Moving to the Yukon was a learning experience at the beginning, but Zabunyan found the people nicer (compared to some big cities he’d spent time in) and said that living Up North made him more humble, as he was able to find out more about himself. He’s now delighted to be living in Carmacks and still following his passions. He says his life still consists of family, career and basketball.

“You have to follow what you love,” he said. “And I was lucky enough to do that.” n

PHOTOS: Dikran Zabunyan

Dikran Zabunyan was inducted into the Canadian Basketball Hall of Fame in 2019

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