Why Canada's destruction of France could be tipping point for national program

One game, good start, long tournament, blah, blah, blah.

Sorry, not buying it. For the Canadian senior men’s national team, this was the game. We could very well look back after the players are on the podium at the FIBA World Cup in early September and say, "Nah, this was the moment."

We could look back next summer, when Canada is playing for an Olympic medal in Paris, and recognize that it was on this day, halfway across the world in Jakarta, that this program had the breakthrough it has so desperately been seeking.

We could look back a decade from now, when Canada is one of the most decorated men’s programs in the world, with history of big performances at huge events — like Argentina had going for the better part of 20 years, or Spain has had for the past 15 — and say, "This was when it all started."

Am I getting carried away?

Maybe. But context matters, and the Canadian men’s national team not only winning its opening game at the FIBA Basketball World Cup but winning in a 30-point blowout against France — the defending Olympic silver medallists, World Cup bronze medalists and very likely the most highly regarded team other than the USA at the event — is hard to under-sell.

Sure, those with skin in the game tried to keep things low-key in the moments after Canada’s 95-65 smashing on Friday of France. You’d expect nothing different.

“We played pretty good,” said Canada's Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who shook off a shaky first half, where he was just 2-of-9 from the floor, to explode for 13 points in a pivotal third quarter. Canada then stretched its three-point halftime lead to 20 to start the fourth with a 25-8 display of two-way dominance.

The Oklahoma City Thunder star looked every inch an early tournament MVP as he finished with 27 points, 13 rebounds and six assists. He was joined at the party by superb defensive efforts from Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort as they helped erase French star Evan Fournier in the second half, while Kelly Olynyk helped orchestrate the offence and Nickeil Alexander-Walker sparked the bench with 12 points in 20 minutes.

Still, protocol calls for downplaying everything until the job is done.

"We haven’t done s---," was Canadian head coach Jordi Fernandez’s way of not getting carried away when he addressed his team in the dressing room at Indonesia Arena.

He elaborated on the podium later, quite reasonably acknowledging to the gathered media that “it’s always good to be rewarded when you’ve been working so hard. I give these guys all the credit in the world. When everybody tells you the outside noise is (saying) how good you are, and you work and you show it and you play this hard, you’ve got to enjoy it.

"(But) my job is to get them ready for the next game … the next game is the most important game of your life.”

Well, Canada’s next game in Group H is against Lebanon on Sunday, who lost by 39 to a Latvian team that is playing without its lone star, Boston Celtics big man Kristaps Porzingis. There is no chance Canada is losing to Lebanon, and is very unlikely to lose to Latvia either, but metaphorically speaking, we take Fernandez’s point at face value.

But it’s completely fair and perhaps even more sensible to look at Canada’s win against France not as the first of the tournament, but the last of an era, the nail in the coffin of a decade of frustration and the moment when the Canadian men’s team finally announced to the world that all the on-paper potential it has shown since Canadians began arriving in the NBA en masse is finally going to be realized.

Leave it to Brooks, Canada’s bruising defensive wing and designated truth-teller, to say the quiet part out loud:

“We put the world on notice,” he told Sportsnet’s Arash Madani in the moments after the final buzzer. “This ain’t no joke, we ain’t playing.”

The win matters on a number of levels.

Most tangibly, it immediately puts Canada in control of Group H. Barring an almost unimaginable stumble against Lebanon or being undone by an unlikely but still conceivable barrage of three-pointers from overmatched Latvia, Canada will finish 3-0 in the first stage of group play, and likely advance to the second stage with the best point differential (unless someone else beats France by 30).

Waiting for them in the next stage will be defending world champion Spain — which, most acknowledge, has taken a step back in the post-Gasol brothers era — and Brazil, which Canada will need to keep ahead of if it wants to qualify for the Olympics as one of the top-two teams of seven from the Americas in the 32-team World Cup field.

Canada has already beaten Spain (albeit in overtime) in a recent friendly and the way it rag-dolled France suggests it is getting better as the players gain more experience together. Brazil is one of the better teams in the tournament among those without any NBA talent, but Canada is a better team, top-to-bottom.

If form holds, Canada could head into the quarter-final knockout stage 5-0 and with a glossy point differential. It would likely mean a top-four seed and (potentially) avoiding an early match-up with Team USA or Australia, the two powers on the other side of the bracket.

It’s a lot of looking ahead, and a lot of "if this happens, then this could happen," but it’s all plausible because Canada showed up in a crucial game against an elite opponent with the world watching — and was a wrecking ball.

“We got our ass kicked,” was Fournier’s succinct summary.

It’s the kind of win that puts not only the opposition on notice, but also bolsters the internal belief that all teams profess to have but only really takes root and germinates when fertilized by actual accomplishment.

Losing to France wouldn’t have been the end of the world. Heading into it the game, it was the most likely outcome, given that Canada was playing a real game for the first time and France was returning its entire starting lineup from the gold medal game at the Olympics just two years ago.

The only teams to beat France in the past five years are Australia, Argentina and the United States — a short list of excellent teams.

Had Canada lost, it still would have emerged from its group with wins over Lebanon and Latvia and could still convince itself — and anyone else — that it was good enough to win its crossover games against Spain and Brazil.

But the road would be harder, the margin for error nearly non-existent.

The road is still difficult, and the potential for disaster in a short tournament always looms. And, historically, if there’s a banana peel to slip on, Canada will find it. But for the moment, the facts are unassailable: By blowing out France, Canada did everything it could to put itself in the best position possible to do something historic. 

A chance to play for a medal suddenly became much more realistic. A spot in the Olympic tournament next summer got very tangibly closer.

After decades where believing in the senior men’s team meant setting yourself up for disappointment, with one dominant outing when it needed it most, Canada’s senior men’s team made believing not only safe, but the smart bet.