Olympic basketball takeaways: Canada lets opportunity slip away vs. Australia

The Australian women’s basketball program has been an international power for decades, with three Olympic silvers and two bronze medals in the cabinet since the 1996 Olympics.

As recently as 2022, Australia won bronze at the FIBA Women’s World Cup.

The Australians may not be the power they were when Lauren Jackson was one of the best basketball players in the world, but they came into the 2024 Olympics ranked third for good reason and boast five current WNBA players in their starting lineup.

All of which is to say that in isolation Canada’s 70-65 loss to the Opals in Group B play on Thursday in Lille, France is nothing to be embarrassed about. Even coming off a stunning upset in its tournament opener to unheralded Nigeria, Australia would have been the slight favourite against fifth-ranked Canada, at least in my eyes.

And there’s no question that this version of the Canadian team was more prepared to battle that the group that lost by 21 to France in its tournament opener.

“Our first showing wasn't us, and we know that we represent so much more when we put a Canada jersey on, and so I was really proud of how we came out today and how we fought,” said four-time Olympian Natalie Achonwa to reporters in Lille. “We had some lapses in execution, but no matter what, the grit that we play with is truly who we are and I'm glad that we showed that today.”

But when this Olympic tournament is said and done, they will look at this game as one that was there to win but which they somehow, inexplicably, kept fumbling out of their fingers, their best efforts aside.

As a result, with an 0-2 record in pool play and with a -26-point differential, the Canadians' chances at advancing to the quarterfinals will rely on them winning by a big score against Nigeria on Sunday with the unlikely hope they can squeeze through on tiebreaker.

Australia didn’t play particularly well. The boxscore shows that Canada made 12 steals and benefited from 20 Australian turnovers, but a good number of those were less the result of Canadian pressure and more from some sloppy Aussie ball-handling. Still, Canada didn’t create enough advantages from all those opportunities.

Australia made five turnovers in the third quarter alone, but Canada scored only two points as a result. In the first eight minutes of the fourth quarter, they benefited from four more Australian miscues but scored just once. Meanwhile, on at least two occasions in that stretch, Canada gave the ball right back and surrendered baskets of its own. In the end, Canada scored 20 points off Australia’s 20 turnovers, a number that looks better because Canada scored five points in the final 29 seconds after a pair of Australian giveaways when the game was well in hand.

In reality, the Canadians let Australia off the hook by committing 16 turnovers of their own and not punishing their opponents sufficiently for their mistakes. When Nigeria upset Australia on the first day of competition, it outscored the favourites 26-19 in points off turnovers, while Australia outscored Canada 21-20.

Another momentum killer was Canada's collective performance at the free throw line. Getting to the line 24 times in a 40-minute game is an impressive feat, particularly when your opponent gets to the stripe only eight times.

But it was another clear advantage that Canada frittered away, shooting just 16-of-24. In the first half, starting point guard Shay Colley was able to the line six times, but converted only twice as Canada trailed 38-32 going into the half.

And perhaps the moment when it became apparent that this was not a game Canada was going to figure out how to win came in the opening moments of the fourth quarter when Achonwa – an 81-per-cent free throw shooter over nine WNBA seasons and an otherwise solid contributor Thursday with seven assists and four steals from her starting centre spot – went to the line four times in the space of 33 seconds and missed all of them.

As the camera zoomed in, Achonwa could be seen emphatically mouthing a four-letter word that captured the sentiment of any Canadian fan watching

“Yeah. I mean, you can't miss four free throws in a tight game,” Achonwa said to reporters after the game. “You can't miss four free throws, and so I think that's where I was really hard on myself. I'm better than that, but there's other ways that I know I contributed to the game, and it's not [only] points. So I know I had to come in that moment and show some resilience and show some leadership, and I did that defensively and I did that by getting my teammates open on offence as well.”

Nothing seemed to go quite as hoped.

Canada got an impressive offensive performance from Bridget Carleton, who finished with 19 points, eight rebounds, four assists and three steals while shooting 5-of-7 from three, but didn’t have anyone step up in support of the Minnesota Lynx forward.

Kia Nurse, who has led Canada in scoring at the past two Olympic tournaments, had a miserable outing, shooting just 3-of-14 from the game and counting three turnovers without an assists, with almost all of her looks coming while contested. She is 7-of-23 through two games.

She’s not alone in her offensive struggles as Canada shot just 21-of-60 from the floor. Take away Carleton’s shooting and the rest of the lineup shot just 29 per cent for the game.

Australia’s varied offence proved difficult for Canada to contain as once again an opponent was able to attack the rim either by simple one-on-one advantages or Canadian breakdowns in pick-and-roll coverage. Canada surrendered 40 points in the paint for the second consecutive game. Australia had five players score in double figures, shot 48 per cent from the floor and 40 per cent from three and offset its 20 turnovers somewhat with 24 assists on 29 field goals

Head coach Victor Lapena, who guided Canada to an impressive fourth-place finish at the World Cup in 2022 (where the Canadians lost to Australia by 30 in the bronze-medal game), has to share some of the responsibility as well.

Through two games, his substitution patterns have been, at best, hard to figure out.

Cassandre Prosper of Montreal is a fantastic prospect for Canada and will undoubtedly be a cornerstone for the program in the years to come, but the 19-year-old seeing her first game action with Canada trailing by 11 in the early moments of the fourth quarter seems weird.

At one point with the game in the balance down the stretch, Lapena had a lineup that included Prosper and 18-year-old Syla Swords, 22-year-old Aaliyah Edwards and first-time Olympian Sami Hill on the floor alongside Kayla Alexander.

Who was supposed to initiate the offence with that group? Were they connected enough defensively?

And if you trusted Prosper enough for crucial fourth-quarter minutes in a virtually must-win game, why did she only play those three fourth-quarter minutes?

Canada was -3 during Prosper’s stint. This is not to pinpoint her in any way, but only to highlight what seemed like some odd coaching choices.

In contrast, for the second consecutive game, Nirra Fields, a three-time Olympian who has proven to be an effective sparkplug over her national team career as a lead guard, played just five minutes spread over two stints. While CBC Olympics did report Fields was dealing with an injury, the moves seemed random.

Laeticia Amihere, a 23-year-old sophomore with the Atlanta Dream in the WNBA, once again made a brief first-half cameo, just as she did in Canada’s loss to France, and after two minutes didn’t see the floor again.

It’s not a comment of how effective anyone was, just that there seems to make the effort to get players onto the floor without any discernable purpose. You either trust them or you don’t.

Coming into these Olympics, where the Canadian women are making their fourth consecutive appearance, it was clear that the program was in a transition phase.

At one end of the roster you had the likes of Achonwa, Nurse, Kayla Alexander, Colley and Fields – all long-time pros and program veterans who aren’t likely going to be sticking around until 2028, or even beyond these Olympics, conceivably.

At the other end, you had Edwards, Swords, Amihere and Prosper – youngsters just beginning their professional and/or senior team careers.

In the middle, you have Carleton, who is in the midst of her best WNBA season and at 27 should be mainstay for one more Olympic cycle, but is not the kind of player that can lift a team on her own.

The question was if the veterans alone would have enough to help the Canadians get out of a tough group – a feat they managed at the World Cup in 2022, but couldn’t at the Olympics in 2021 – or if the youngsters would be able to add a spark to help make it happen.

Through two frustrating games and less than optimal performances, the answer would seem to be ‘no’ on both counts. The veteran group wasn’t able to provide the horsepower necessary to counter a rising French team and a veteran Australian team that is wobbly but still capable, and for the all the promise of the younger group, collectively they weren’t quite ready to make up the difference.

Here are some other takeaways from the game.

Like a fine wine

Can we just pause and reflect on the wonder that is Lauren Jackson?

The Australian legend is playing in her fifth Olympic tournament, which is bananas on its own, but even more amazing because she retired from basketball due to injury prior in 2016 and missed the Olympics in Rio that year and Tokyo in 2021.

In theory, this could have been the seventh Olympic tournament for the 43-year-old hall-of-famer. She started a family in the meantime – she has two kids – and decided she wanted to return playing to get back into shape and be able to play with them.

Fast forward and Jackson scored 30 points against Canada to help lift Australia to a bronze medal at the World Cup in Sydney in 2022 in one of the great throwback performances you will ever see. Then she tore her Achilles tendon, missing her 2022-23 season in WNBL in Australia. She still wasn’t done as she came back and helped her club win the league title for the seventh time.

Jackson wasn’t much of a factor on Thursday against Canada, going scoreless in eight minutes, but if Australia ends up going deeper into this tournament, don’t be surprised if she makes a bigger impact at some point.

On the rise

It’s probably not fair to get too excited about Syla Swords, the 18-year-old who played 15 minutes for Canada on Thursday. She hasn’t even started her freshman season at the University of Michigan yet. How impactful an international player she will be or if there is a WNBA future for her is impossible to know.

Swords doesn’t jump off the page with her athleticism or her size, which are crucial separators at the highest level of the sport. But what is obvious is that she understands every inch of the game. To be on the floor in a game with the stakes as high as they were and to never once look flustered or overwhelmed and quite often look the opposite – calm and in control – is an amazing attribute.

That kind of poise and IQ is impossible to teach and on its own bodes very well for her long-term future.

Learning opportunity

It was great to see Aaliyah Edwards get more playing time – 23 minutes, the most among non-starters and a bump from the 20 minutes she played in Game 1. The former UConn star plays with a level of physicality and determination that allows her to be impactful in almost any situation.

But one thing she is going to need to clean up is her defensive awareness off the ball and when she gets involved in screen-and-roll situations. She wasn’t alone in some of the mistakes Canada was making, but there were a few plays when she didn’t read the rotation or make it quickly enough and Australia took advantage.

With Australia up by eight early in the fourth, Edwards was part of two breakdowns leading to easy looks that put the Aussies up by 13. Edwards also was part of a pair of similar breakdowns ending the second quarter.

Edwards' work rate will always be valuable, but she’ll be at her best when her experience lets her to recognize some defensive situations a little sooner, allowing her talent to take over.