'I drive, he shoots': How will Canada's Murray and Gilgeous-Alexander work as teammates?

TORONTO — For those looking for a little feel-good Canada Day basketball visual, how about the last time that Jamal Murray wore the red and white?

The scene was the Mattamy Athletic Centre in downtown Toronto, the occasion the Pan Am Games, with the Canadian men’s national team facing Team USA for the right to play for a gold medal. 

It wasn’t quite the Olympics, and Team USA was made up of a group of college all-stars and journeymen pros instead of the legend-studded squad they will bring to France later this summer, but they still had USA across their chests, it still felt big. 

Murray came off the bench for then-national team head coach Jay Triano and took over the game, exploding for 22 points in the fourth quarter and overtime to earn the win over Team USA.

Canada eventually had to settle for silver when they lost the final to Brazil. But it was notable because it was Murray’s first experience playing for the senior men’s team. He was just 18 years old. It seemed to signal the start of something. 

Anyone lucky enough to see it will never forget it, but we haven’t seen it since. 

Due to a range of circumstances, it’s taken nine years for what was promised to be realized. When Murray took the floor with the national team at the start of training camp Friday — healthy, ready to play, no excuses or limitations — it sent a message to the rest of the basketball world that Canada is coming for gold when the Olympic tournament tips off on July 27. 

What does the Denver Nuggets star and 2023 NBA champion think he can add to a team that won a bronze medal at the FIBA Basketball World Cup?

“Everything that my game has to offer. Hopefully a sense of calmness when I’m on the floor. Knowing what I did last time I played or had the leaf on my chest bringing back those days...” Murray said. “Those were fun times playing against other countries. Like I said, it’s going to be a lot of fun to do it again.”

Murray’s not the primary reason Canada is the second-leading favourite to win gold in France. 

For all of the Kitchener, Ont., star’s successes, the national team program is firmly in the grasp of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander now.

There are a couple of reasons for that, the first being Gilgeous-Alexander has been recognized as one of the five best basketball players in the world for two years running, finishing fifth in NBA MVP voting in 2022-23 and second this past season. In between, he was named to the all-tournament team at the World Cup as he led Canada in every way possible. 

The other is that while Murray committed to being part of Canada Basketball’s 'summer core' as they started to build up to the current Olympic cycle, injuries and post-championship fatigue kept him from playing, even though he was present at training camp each of the past two summers.

In the meantime, Gilgeous-Alexander has been all-in from the start, along with the rest of the group that helped Canada pre-qualify for the Olympics. Their dramatic, roller-coaster win over Spain helped Canada advance to the medal round at the World Cup and secured their Olympic berth. 

Which begs the question: will there be any challenges dropping in a talent like Murray, who boasts a well-earned reputation as one of the NBA’s most lethal closers and masterful post-season performers — he has averaged 24.2 points and 6.2 assists over 65 playoff games with enough signature moments to write a novella — into a cohesive lineup built around the talents of Gilgeous-Alexander and the rest of the incumbents?

There’s only one ball, no matter how well-meaning everyone is and how noble the goal is.

Things got off to a good start the other day when Gilgeous-Alexander, who attacks the paint better than almost anyone in the sport, was asked about his backcourt pairing with Murray, as lethal marksman as there is in the game. 

“I drive, he shoots. Simple as that,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. 

To which Murray responded when asked on Sunday: 

“I would say he’s on point.”

But there’s more to it than that, isn’t there? How does adding 30-plus minutes a game of Murray, not to mention a volume of touches that would justifiably be comparable to Gilgeous-Alexander’s volume, impact the team?

How to sort out who gets the ball late in crucial games? Keep in mind it was Dillon Brooks who carried Canada's offence with his 39-point explosion against Team USA in the bronze-medal game at the World Cup. And what about RJ Barrett, Lu Dort and the newly added Andrew Nembhard? Canada’s guard and wing depth is such that’s it’s going to be seemingly impossible to find enough minutes for everyone. 

That task falls on head coach Jordi Fernandez and — it has to be said — they are great problems to have.

If they’re even problems at all. 

“Good players don't make good teams,” said Fernandez. “The glue is what makes a good team. The guys come together here to spend time together, to work together, to sweat together, to get yelled at together, to have fun together. I think that's the most important thing.

“I don't like thinking in a negative way. So I don’t like to be thinking about possible problems. A problem is going to be a problem when we have it. We don't have it right now. They're doing a great job. Everybody's working well. And ultimately my job is to tell everybody what their job is and what their role is. And it's gonna be different than what they do for their (NBA) teams. And here for this setting. You're gonna have to embrace your role, not accept it, but embrace it. And that's how you make this team better.”

Adding Murray to a team that already has Gilgeous-Alexander is another way to make any team better, providing the fit is instant and eventually seamless. 

It should be an immaculate pairing, not only because of the complementary nature of their skill sets, but also because each is used to playing in well-balanced ecosystems on their NBA teams — Murray in his exquisite two-man game with Nikola Jokic, amplified by the otherwise perfect balance in the Nuggets starting five the past two seasons, and Gilgeous-Alexander as the benevolent leader of the many talents in the kingdom of OKC. 

As good as each of them are, their genius is in their ability to work well with others.

Even those who get to work with the pair of Canadian backcourt stars are eager to see how it looks on wood, rather than on paper, or in everyone’s imagination. 

“It's going to be fun. I know he's confident, he can get hot and he's a guy that can get it going along with Shai,” said Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who was part of Canada’s core last summer, is Gilgeous-Alexander’s first cousin and might see his role shift with the arrival of Murray.

“So it just adds another dynamic piece to our team, a three-level scorer, a guy who's been doing this for a long time now and has had success in the league. And I think anytime we can add a piece like that to the team, we're going to take it, use it. We know what we got in him. We've got his back. As far as I'm concerned, anybody that's travelling with me, anybody that is on the team, going through this together, that's all that matters.”

But what does he think about having two guys who can get 40 points in a given night sharing the same backcourt? 

“I feel like the same as everybody else. It's gonna be fun. It's gonna be cool. As a teammate, I just got a better view,” said Alexander-Walker. “And I get to see the ins and outs of things and the behind-the-scenes, I guess. It's going to be a lot of fun, great talent. And I think those guys have done the work to where it speaks for themselves.”

NOTES: 

The men’s national team got their second bit of bad personnel news through their third day of training camp, when the team announced Sunday that Zach Edey, recently drafted ninth overall by the Memphis Grizzlies, was withdrawing himself from consideration for the Olympic team. It followed the announcement Friday that Andrew Wiggins wasn’t going to be in camp. 

“Since last summer, I have been training and competing nonstop to achieve my goals of winning a national championship at Purdue and making it to the NBA,” Edey said in a statement released by Canada Basketball.

“I have a duty now to properly prepare for all that is coming my way with being drafted by the Memphis Grizzlies. The work I put in this summer on my body and my game is critical for me to be the best version of myself. Thank you to Canada Basketball and all the fans for your support and understanding. Representing Canada in the Olympics remains a lifelong dream of mine, but for now, I look forward to being the team’s biggest fan from this side of the Atlantic.”

There was no guarantee that Edey, the reigning two-time national player of year, would even be one of the 12 players selected for the final roster — he played just 23 total minutes at the World Cup, with 16 of those coming in a blowout win over Lebanon in group play. But having a seven-foot-four, 300-pound insurance policy with five fouls to use sitting on your bench wouldn’t be the worst idea, especially since Canada is otherwise fairly small across the front line. 

But once Edey rocketed up the draft boards, the likelihood of an NBA team letting their first-round pick miss all of Summer League, and any other off-season development programs they might have in store, took a corresponding nose dive. The Grizzlies could be one of the best teams in the Western Conference this season, and Edey could be a major part of their rotation. Having him spend the summer with the national team on the outer reaches of Canada’s rotation doesn’t make sense, not when the Grizzlies are paying him $26 million. 

“You think if you’re gonna take someone in the top 10 (of the draft), they probably have big plans for him and I think that bodes well for Canada in the future,” said men’s national team general manager Rowan Barrett.

“The more he’s playing, the more he’s getting on the court, can only help us in the long run. Obviously, we’d like to have him here,” Barrett continued. “We think there’s some things we could do with him but… we’re happy for him. This is a dream, he’s going to be able to take care of himself and his family.”