Elite closers Murray, Gilgeous-Alexander will give Canada's opposition nightmares

Clutch.

In basketball — sports, really — there is no higher level of respect than being known as a clutch player, the type who can execute in critical moments against the highest level of competition.

It’s often the final examination determining the difference between good, great and legendary.

Not every team has a player that qualifies for the job, a player who can create offence against loaded defences at that point of a pivotal game or a playoff series when tactics and strategies are almost secondary to individual brilliance.

The Canadian men’s national team may be very fortunate this summer to have two of them when it opens the Olympic basketball tournament on July 27 in Lille, France.

It’s what makes Canada — ranked seventh in the FIBA World Rankings and coming off a bronze-medal showing at the FIBA Basketball World Cup last summer — a team to be reckoned with.

Picture it: It's the end of a crucial game in pool play or perhaps to advance into semifinals and the chance to play for a medal, and Canada has the option to put the ball into the hands of either Shai Gilgeous-Alexander or Jamal Murray, with opposing defences having to defend one knowing the other is lurking, ready to exploit any weakness if they over commit.

It’s Canada’s luxury and an opposition nightmare.

“I mean, with all the schematic things that are going on in the game or tactical sense from a coaching standpoint, I think that you're always trying to find, on your own team, what the individual advantages that you have on your team from a personnel standpoint, and how do you maximize that throughout the game, depending on what the other team is capable of defensively,” says men’s national team assistant coach Nate Mitchell, who has also been on staff with the Charlotte Hornets, Toronto Raptors and Milwaukee Bucks. “And there's times where you have a guy on your team, where it doesn't matter who the defender is … when you have guys like the ones we’re talking about, you don’t have to figure out things all the time. You just get one of those guys the ball and say, ‘Get us a shot.’ As a coach, what are you drawing up better than that?”

The first round of the NBA playoffs have only proved the point that anyone who has followed Canadian basketball has known ever since first Murray and Gilgeous-Alexander burst into prominence: they are killer closers. They’ll get to test themselves when they lead the Denver Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder into the second round.

Murray was already minted, having established himself as a playoff maestro with his explosion in the bubble in 2020 as he helped Denver to the Western Conference Finals, dishing out 50-point games like glazed donuts at Tim’s. He doubled down last season when he averaged 26.1 points, 7.1 assists, 5.7 rebounds and 1.5 steals as he earned his first NBA title with the Denver Nuggets.

But Murray put himself in the history books in the Nuggets' first-round win over the Los Angeles Lakers this year when he became the first player in NBA history to hit two game-winning shots in the final five seconds to win a game in the same playoff series, knocking down a buzzer-beater to snatch Game 1 from the Lakers and then sent them home with another high-degree-of-difficult fadeaway in the waning seconds of Game 5 on Monday night, capping off a 32-point effort in a game he wasn’t expecting to play due to a calf strain.

“The bigger the moment, the bigger Jamal Murray shines,” Nuggets head coach Mike Malone told reporters afterward. “He’s one tough cookie.”

No one who watched Canada at the World Cup last summer would ever doubt Gilgeous-Alexander’s late-game bonafides. In addition to the all-around excellence that earned him tournament All-Star status, there was some iconic clutch shot-making, such as the step-back jumper against Spain in the final minute that earned Canada its first Olympic berth since 2000, or the flurry of buckets he delivered in the fourth quarter and overtime that helped Canada to its overtime win of Team USA and the bronze medal.

But now the NBA knows definitively what he’s capable of when the stakes get ratcheted up in the post-season as he led the Thunder — with a collective average age of less than 24 years old — to first-round sweep over the New Orleans Pelicans, making the Thunder the youngest team in league history to advance to the second round.

Gilgeous-Alexander — a finalist for the regular-season MVP award — set the tone with his slithering, awkward, wrong-footed floater hit at the horn to give the Thunder the win in Game 1. He went on to average 27 points, six rebounds and five assists for the series, all while being hounded by the Pelicans' Herb Jones, who is a favourite to earn all-NBA defensive recognition.

The potential for Gilgeous-Alexander and Murray in the same floor in France this summer promises to be Canada’s superpower with a roster that is otherwise deep with guards and wings but short on difference-making bigs.

Of course, this assumes that both will play. Gilgeous-Alexander has emerged as the face of the program since 2022, participating in World Cup qualifying games two summers ago and starring in the World Cup last year. Barring injury, his presence is as sure a bet as anyone else’s on the projected roster.

Murray is part of the ‘summer core’ that was established at the start of the current Olympic cycle and has been present at training camps the past two years, as well as in advance of the World Cup in 2019, but hasn’t put a Canadian uniform on since he made his senior team debut at the Pan Am Games in Toronto in 2015, citing injuries and fatigue.

But presuming both are available, the Canadian coaching staff could be spoiled for choice in the guts of tough games.

The good news is their skills should be complementary. Murray’s shooting range will stretch defences already compromised by the need to have multiple defenders with eyes on Gilgeous-Alexander for when he inevitably ghosts the first one trying to contain him. Similarly, Murray’s proven individual shot-making and skill at working the two-man game with Nuggets star Nikola Jokic should leave the defence in shambles if, or when, Gilgeous-Alexander gets brought into the action.

Even better news is that in addition to their varied skill sets and experience, Gilgeous-Alexander and Murray each have the additional intangibles it takes to win big games and have shown it over and over in the careers, let alone in the first round of the NBA playoffs.

“The first thing those guys have it a mindset,” says Mitchell. “They have that ability to slow down within a moment, and know what exactly they want to do and where they don’t feel like there's [all these other] things going on. I think a lot of people, at the end of the game, they get rushed, but ... when they make big shots, it’s like normal to them, like Jamal in his [post-game] interview the other night, he’s like, ‘Yeah, pretty good.’ It was no big deal to him. And Shai, when he hits a big shot, it’s usually him telling the bench to calm down. So, they have that mindset and they both have that creativity. … With these two guys, they're gonna get a shot off. And most guys can't get a shot off, or a get a quality shot off, but I think when you're that good, and you know how to get to your shot, depending on the situation.”

Gilgeous-Alexander and Murray have each shown the ability to rise to the challenge in the most difficult situations in an NBA game. The hope is that they’ll both be available to do it in the most dreamlike situation of all for a Canadian basketball fan: wearing the red-and-white this summer and lifting Canada to an Olympic medal.

That would be clutch.