With seconds remaining in one of the biggest games in Canadian basketball history, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander sat on the bench with a towel covering his face. Behind it, he breathed heavily, trying to compose himself after scoring 27 points in 37 minutes in a quarterfinal matchup against the host nation France.
But instead of shifting his attention to the semifinals against Germany as many people in the program and fans watching back home were expecting, Gilgeous-Alexander was coming to terms with the fact that his performance wasn’t enough — that his team fell short of its goal. Dillon Brooks came over to give him a pat on the leg as Canada lost to France, 82-73, and was eliminated from the team’s first Olympic appearance in 24 years.
The sentiment back in Canada is one of disappointment. Fans can’t seem to believe that a team this talented, with this many NBA players and this good of a superstar could lose to France, a team that hadn’t looked its best all tournament after going 2-1 in the group stage, including an overtime win over the world’s No. 26 ranked team, Japan. And they certainly can’t seem to understand how it happened with Victor Wembenyama scoring just seven points and Rudy Gobert playing just three minutes, with the French instead leaning on European pros Guerschon Yabusele, Isaia Cordinier and Mathias Lessort for 55 of their 82 points.
But in international basketball — where one game is all you need to knock a favourite out of the tournament — upsets like this are actually quite common. To assume that Canada should have walked their way to the podium because it had 10 NBA players underestimates the quality of the competition, the razor-thin margin between NBA players and high-level European pros, and the importance of experience in international competition. Especially at these Olympics — the most competitive international basketball tournament of all time, with a record 51 NBA players scattered across 12 rosters.
“It’s the best basketball players in the world, so it’s a very hard tournament, if not the hardest,” Gilgeous-Alexander said to CBC Olympics after the game. “Once you get to the elimination round, everything matters a little bit more. I think we’ll be more prepared for that next time.”
That doesn’t make the loss to France any less disappointing. Canada was a perfect 3-0 in the ‘Group of Death’ and landed on the opposite side of the bracket as Team USA, setting it up for a decent chance to win its first Olympic medal since 1936. But its reward was to play France in Paris, with five NBA players and a storied program that won silver three years ago in Tokyo. Now, the semifinal will feature France, reigning World Cup champions Germany, reigning World Cup runners-up Serbia, and the reigning Olympic gold medalists United States. Looking at it from that perspective, Canada would have been an outlier had they advanced.
The point is that not all losses are created equally. Some defeats, like when Canada lost to an underdog Venezuela in 2015 in Mexico City, happened because of dumb luck. Others, like in 2016 against France in Manila, happened because the program couldn’t get commitment from its best players. And others, like in 2021 against the Czech Republic in Victoria, B.C., happened because of a lack of preparation and experience.
This one happened because, on a Tuesday afternoon in Paris, France was the better team. It happened because France made more shots, came up with more loose balls and executed its game plan more precisely. And while that’s disappointing, it’s not a failure.
“They were better than us, played harder than us and we saw it from the jump,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander told CBC Olympics after the game. “We obviously tried to make our run in the second half. It wasn’t enough.”
“But that’s what happens when you let teams get off to a good start. They came out the aggressors, they punched us in the mouth.”
It helped that France had a massive home court advantage, with about 20,000 spectators stomping their feet and chanting their most patriotic songs throughout the entirety of the game, with French guard Evan Fournier telling reporters “People that were here, they gave us everything.”
It wasn’t surprising to see the inexperienced Canadians get off to a shaky start, throwing turnovers and missing easy buckets at the rim, falling behind by double digits within the first three minutes before settling down in the second quarter.
Canada couldn’t recover from a clearly nervous start, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. Head coach Jordi Fernandez cycled through 11 of his 12 players in the first 16 minutes alone. Canada won the third and fourth quarters after finding lineups that worked and by playing harder, scrapping for loose balls and bringing physicality to its French adversaries. To say that the Canadians didn’t play hard would be a falsehood — Lu Dort literally flew across the floor to punch a basketball toward Gilgeous-Alexander for a layup.
But as Jamal Murray pointed out after the game, Canada was never able to knock down enough shots to complete a comeback. They went cold, shooting 38 percent from the field and 24 percent from three. Murray was a big part of that, never coming to life in the tournament despite being given every opportunity to do so. And the officiating didn’t help either, as Canada’s undersized guards and wings were consistently called for fouls after fighting for space against the bigger French forwards posting them up, shooting just 25 free-throws compared to 42 for France.
“France played a hell of a game,” Murray said to The Atheltic. “Give it to them. They played physical. They played like they’re at home, and they brought that energy from the start.”
Unfortunately, this isn’t the NBA where championships are decided in a best-of-seven series. In FIBA, history says that anything that could go wrong often does. It’s a more physical game played on a smaller court with shorter quarters and a shorter three-point line, giving it more volatility. To assume that Canada should have walked its way to the podium because it has lots of NBA players would be to assume that FIBA works that way, which it rarely does.
And that’s the point I’m trying to make here: While Canada had as much talent as anybody in the tournament outside the States, they didn’t have experience or history on their side. And that matters in win-or-go-home games; it matters in hostile environments when 99 per cent of the crowd is rooting for the other team.
And with that in mind, it was always going to be an uphill battle for a young group of players who had never been to the Olympics before — many of whom had only played a handful of FIBA games before — to get to the podium. In fact, it was obvious who showed up last summer and who didn’t, because the newer players like Murray, Andrew Nembhard and Trey Lyles struggled to find their rhythm throughout the tournament.
Canada could have won a medal. They also could have failed to advance through the group stage. That’s the nature of this Olympic competition.
“It’s not a good feeling,” Fernandez told reporters after the game. “There’s always some disappointment at some point, and you don’t know how much you can do until you go through tough times. We’ve had success because we’ve won a lot of games in the last two years. (But in) these tough times, we cannot forget. We cannot forget how this feels and that’s how we move on (from) this.”
The reason I hesitate to label this performance a failure is because much of what happened against France was out of the program’s control. Take, for example, the idea that Team Canada was “selfish,” which Fernandez said after the game and reporters were quick to repeat after Canada finished with just 13 assists and 14 turnovers.
But to mistake selfish play for selfish players would be ignorant. This is one of the most selfless groups in the tournament — a group of men who grew up together and relished the opportunity to take smaller roles if it meant representing their country on basketball’s biggest stage.
Instead, the selfish play came from inexperience. Canada reverted to isolation basketball and tried to do too much individually, not because any of them wanted to wear the cape but because they got uncomfortable after France slowed them down in the half-court. And when NBA players with limited FIBA experience get uncomfortable, they tend to revert to isolation.
The other big downfall of Canada’s Olympic run was a lack of size which, again, was mostly out of its control. Canada brought the country’s best available big men to the competition.
Unfortunately, because big men are difficult to identify and develop — and because the NBA has gone away from traditional bigs in recent years— there is a dearth of talented bigs in the Great White North. Even Zach Edey, the No. 9 pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, was overlooked by Canada Basketball for years.
As much as Canada has grown as a basketball nation, we are not alone. Amazing things are happening in countries like France — which has produced the No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft two years running — Germany, Serbia, Australia, Spain and all over the world. In fact, these countries have a much more storied basketball history than Canada does, with a culture that sends fans all over the world to support the national teams. That basketball culture exists in Toronto, but it’s still a fringe sport in most of the country.
The people most loudly critical of Canada’s performance in France seem to be the ones who tune into the national team once every four years and don’t understand how difficult and random these international competitions tend to be. How can Canadians expect Olympic success when most of us don’t support the program year-round or establish a culture of travelling to the games? That’s called entitlement.
It would have been one thing had the country not taken its most talented players or had politics clouded the situation and given a spot to a player who didn’t deserve it. It would have been different if Canada was unprepared — if they hadn’t spent four weeks practicing twice a day in between playing exhibition games against the best programs in the world. Heck, it might have even been different had they not sacrificed the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to participate in the Opening Ceremonies in order to be fully rested for the competition.
But this team was as prepared as anyone. The Canadians worked as hard as anyone. Maybe even harder. They just lost. It happens.
“I hope that people were proud of us and the way we played throughout the tournament,” Fernandez told reporters after the game. “We wanted to give them more. I think that’s what Canadian basketball deserves. There’s great tradition. There’s a lot of kids playing basketball and you can tell they love to play for their country.
“So, I wish I could have done better and given them more games, but like I said, this is part of how the Olympics work and these tournaments work. You win or go home, and this one, we’re going home.”
Success in sports is rarely linear. And Canada Basketball will have to figure out how to get back onto the podium in 2027 and 2028. As a basketball country, we have four years to follow them there — to invest in basketball at every level so that the athletes do not feel like they are in this alone.
That way, when Canada finally does break through on the international stage, it will be all the more meaningful