It was not the matchup anyone was anticipating when it was announced the Canadian men’s team would be facing Team USA in Sydney, Australia as each side finished off their pre-tournament preparation in advance of the FIBA Basketball World Cup which tips next week in China.
Instead of Jamal Murray and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander testing themselves against James Harden and Kyle Lowry, it was whoever each country could convince to commit to spending six weeks of their off-season risking tendons and ligaments for flag and country.
Even with their A, B and C choices declining to play, Team USA still managed to roll out a lineup featuring multiple NBA all-stars and quality rotation players, such is their bottomless talent pool.
And even though they looked ragged and disjointed in their 84-68 win, they have enough to remain the favourite to earn their third-straight world title.
Canada? They look like a team with will, if not means.
Their biggest star is their coach, Toronto Raptors bench boss Nick Nurse, who is running a team that bears almost no resemblance to the one he thought he’d be coaching when he agreed to take on the job in the haze of the Raptors post-title euphoria.
Nurse probably looked at the opportunity like everyone else did:
This was supposed to be the year Canada emerged as a legitimate challenger to American hoops hegemony — maybe even their main rival — given Canada’s depth of NBA talent.
But with Montreal’s Khem Birch the only one of Canada’s record 17 NBA players with the team as they head to China where they begin pool play against Australia on Sept. 1 — team officials have been adamant Sacramento Kings guard Cory Joseph will join them in time for the tournament after being absent for their five-game tour Down Under — this won’t be the moment Canada Basketball or Canadian basketball fans have been looking forward to ever since this generation of talent began to emerge.
It was supposed to be a joyful coming out party, instead it’s been almost the opposite — the ultimate Canada Basketball letdown.
Just as hopes were highest, with the possibility of much-needed corporate support in the offing and enthusiasm for the game at a peak, Canada’s best players took all the air from the balloon in choosing contracts over country.
It’s the rational choice, and defensible on that basis, but it hardly gets the blood flowing and likely has set back any possibility of the corporate sector getting behind Canada Basketball in a major way for the foreseeable future.
The only sensible view when it comes to Canada’s best competing on the global stage from here on in is ‘show me.’
It has all taken away from those who have made the effort, and unfairly so.
They’re trying folks.
Conclusions drawn from one game against the pre-tournament favourite or even Canada’s five-game tour can’t be overstated. They seem like they can hold their own with gusts of the occasional upset, which is encouraging, but even as Canada held the U.S. to 44-per cent shooting and 2-of-14 from three while forcing 19 turnovers, they looked incapable of creating easy offence for themselves in the half-court or transition.
Canada shot just 32.8 per cent and struggled to finish in the paint against the more athletic U.S. side which translated into more contested threes. Canada shot just 6-of-23 in a category that will have to be their bread and butter if they are going to exceed expectations in China.
The game brought to a close Canada’s pre-tournament preparation that has been parts uplifting and maddening.
The uplifting part is that Nurse has done what he seems to have a remarkable gift for, regardless of whether or not he has Kawhi Leonard on his roster. He seems to quickly identify the best qualities a player has and somehow infuse them with the confidence required to play freely within his up-tempo, perimeter-based system while getting group buy-in defensively.
“I don’t think we played very well tonight,” Nurse told reporters in Sydney after the game, which began at 5:30 a.m. ET. “I think we’ve been playing pretty well, with a lot of juice and energy and spirit…
“[But] we just flush this one away and get back to what we’re doing.
“We’ve got a heck of a lot more in our portfolio from what we’ve done here for three weeks to let this game do anything to us. I think our guys have made a lot of strides and play hard, [and have] chemistry. We’ve been competitive, fun to watch, we’ve defended, we’ve moved the ball, we’ve played great so we’ll get back to doing that.”
They showed their ceiling when they shocked host Australia — who in turn went on to shock the Americans in handing Team USA their first World Cup or Olympic loss in 13 years — in a blowout before losing a competitive return date to the Boomers a night later. Canada then won a pair of physical battles against New Zealand before falling to 3-2 on their trip with the loss to Team USA.
One takeaway can only be that the same wave of talent that has washed up on NBA shores has generated a deep, strong and experienced collection of Canadian pros in Europe who can handle themselves internationally.
Foremost among them is Kevin Pangos. In the midst of carving out one of the most impressive careers ever for a Canadian overseas, he’s building on his breakout season in the EuroLeague with Kaunas in Lithuania a year ago, which earned him a contract with Barcelona, a traditional powerhouse, for this past season and next. Kyle Wiltjer, his former teammate at Gonzaga, has proven himself a bucket-getter in almost any context, the 21 he scored off the bench against Team USA the latest example.
Phil and Thomas Scrubb, the Carleton Ravens stars who have steadily climbed the ranks in Europe, have shown that their national team presence had nothing to do with former Carleton head coach Dave Smart being on the bench with former national team boss Jay Triano, and everything to do with their ability to play any role, guard almost any position and knock down threes. Melvin Ejim’s knack for making life easier for everyone he plays with has made him a valuable commodity overseas, even if the NBA has never quite figured him out, and on down the list.
But it’s maddening because in a proper context, Pangos, Wiltjer, Ejim and the Scrubbs are the core of Canada’s rotation when they would be the depth pieces on a high-end Canadian roster that could push for a medal. They are the kinds of players that would provide just the right complements to the world-class talent that decided to stay home.
Watching Canada against Australia, New Zealand and Team USA has been exciting if you love a good underdog story, and fun because it’s been a chance to see pros that spend so much of their careers off the radar, but frustrating because even two or three additional pieces would so radically alter their likely trajectory.
It’s the Canadian basketball story: what is vs. what could be.
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But the challenge ahead doesn’t change. They need to finish first or second in a pool that includes Australia and Lithuania — top-10 countries in the FIBA rankings — and Senegal, perhaps the best team from Africa.
It might be doable, as their blowout win over Australia proved. But even if they pull that off they will find themselves in a group in the round-of-16 that will likely include France and Germany — another pair of medal contenders well-represented by NBA talent.
The ultimate prize — beyond somehow surviving to play for a medal — would be to finish first or second among teams from the Americas and thus guarantee themselves a spot in Tokyo for the Olympics in 2020.
Presuming even a depleted Team USA side earns one of those berths, Canada will likely have to advance to the quarter-finals to outlast the likes of Argentina or Brazil, who have much easier draws.
Pull that off and this group of Canadian ballers will justifiably earn a place in the country’s basketball lore as the best team that should never have been — a happy accident.
A crash is more likely, but you can only respect the hustle and wonder what could have been.
