Midway through the second quarter of last Sunday’s final pre-Olympic tune-up, with Canada leading Puerto Rico by five points, Nickeil Alexander-Walker took a handoff from teammate Trey Lyles and calculated his choices on the fly.
In a split-second Alexander-Walker, a sixth man for the Minnesota Timberwolves and a key component of Canada’s attack, had reached the right elbow — that spot, about 18 feet from the basket, where the free throw line meets the top of the lane. From there, he could pull up for a jump shot, or turn the corner and drive to the hoop.
Right then you couldn’t blame a casual viewer, eyes fixed on the man with the ball, for losing sight of Lyles. Puerto Rico’s defenders certainly didn’t notice him advancing to a spot deep in the lane, just to the left of the basket, where a pass might arrive. At that same moment, Alexander-Walker chose option three, a bounce pass into an empty space where he expected Lyles to materialize.
Lyles, a 6-foot-9 power forward who averaged 20 minutes a game with the Sacramento Kings last season, arrived on time, grabbed the pass, and banked the ball off the glass and through the hoop to put Canada ahead 32-25 in a game they would eventually win 103-93.
Two players with NBA pedigree and deep-rooted familiarity, and the flawless execution that follows when those two factors come together.
Last summer Canada won bronze at the FIBA Basketball World Cup, qualifying for Paris along the way. This summer they’ll end Canada’s 24-year absence from the Olympic men’s basketball tournament, and enter the competition in a unique position — newcomers with unfinished business.
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Canada’s men’s team last reached an Olympic podium in 1936 when they won a silver medal. Their best results since then — fourth place at the Montreal Olympics in 1976, and again in Los Angeles in 1984. And their most recent Olympic entry came in 2000, when a team led by Steve Nash reached the quarterfinals before losing by five points to France, the eventual silver medallists.
Canada’s draw in Paris can charitably be described as tough. After Saturday’s opener against Greece loom showdowns with Australia, currently No. 5 in FIBA’s men’s rankings, and Spain, who rank second. But every other team in that group also faces an uphill climb to the quarterfinals, especially since their path to the knockout stage goes through seventh-ranked Canada.
For this group, a podium finish isn’t just a hope. It’s a realistic goal.
“We built a chemistry, a connection,” said Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, the Oklahoma City Thunder who finished second in NBA MVP voting this past season. “We’re prepared for this opportunity. We can for sure feel it.”
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Canada defeats Puerto Rico 103-93 in their final Olympic men’s basketball tune-up. Dillon Brooks leads the way for the Canadians with 21 points.
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After dispatching Argentina 87-80 to even their record at 1-1, Canada moved forward at the 1992 Tournament of The Americas needing to win their third game if they hoped to advance to the final four and earn a berth at the Olympics in Barcelona. Their lineup for that pivotal third game featured Leo Rautins, a pioneering Canadian NBA player, and Bill Wennington, who would later win three NBA titles with the Chicago Bulls. They were standout players on a roster heavy on intangibles like experience, hustle and national pride.
The USA Basketball team they faced on June 29 possessed those same qualities, plus a long list of tangibles. This was the original Dream Team — Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson and more — playing in their first tournament. Eventually the entire squad would gain induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, but in late June 1992 they were busy throttling the best opposition in North and South America as part of the Olympic qualification process.
Canada met the U.S. at the Rose Garden in Portland, Ore., home court for Dream Team member and Trailblazers legend Clyde Drexler, and the Canadians, to their credit, kept it competitive early. After one quarter the score was USA 13, Canada 10.
But when the U.S. shifted gears, Canada couldn’t keep pace. Back then, no national team could. Canada had the hustle and the national pride, but the U.S. had the goods, and won 105-61. Headlines in the next day’s newspapers were predictably dismissive of Team Canada.
U.S. stomps Canada without Bird, 105-61, read the Detroit Free Press.
“Crush thy neighbor,” is how the Associated Press began its story about the game.
The only surprise? That the Dream Team didn’t win by more than 44.
“They kind of got us going again because they were doing a little bit of talking,” Magic Johnson told reporters afterward. “We came in at halftime and said, ‘Wait a minute. We can’t be having them talk, so let’s go out and show them the real us… It was [a 17-point lead] at halftime, and before you knew it, it was 30.”
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In previous years the U.S. had sent teams of collegiate players to the Olympics, and even then had lost only twice: Once, in 1972, against the Soviet Union, on a disputed buzzer-beater; and again in 1988, knocked off in the semis by a Soviet team stocked with veterans.
The rule change for the 1992 Olympics that made NBA players eligible came with benefits for several stakeholders. It meant the best, and best-known, players from each country would always have a chance to compete, while injecting NBA stars into the Olympic tournament gave the U.S.-based league increased worldwide visibility.
The upside for USA Basketball seemed even clearer. As long as Olympic competition included NBA players, and as long as the vast majority of NBA stars were American, the U.S. might never lose another men’s Olympic tournament.
As for the idea that NBA players in the Olympics would grant U.S. teams the gold medal in perpetuity?
The Dream Team won its gold medal match 117-85 over Croatia, and four years later the U.S. claimed another gold, by 26 points over Yugoslavia. In 2000 the U.S. defeated France to win another Olympic gold, but the margin of victory had shrunk to 10 points. Four years later in Athens, a U.S. team filled with NBA players lost its semi final to Argentina, and settled for a bronze medal.
American men have won every Olympic gold since then, but only two of the five FIBA World Cups contested since 2006. They enter this Olympic tournament as betting favourites — Sportsbook Review pegs their chance to win at 83.33 per cent — but now it’s clear to both observers and potential opponents that the U.S. can no longer grab any group of NBA players and expect a championship.
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“You can’t expect to throw 12 guys together in seven days and go win a medal,” said Kelly Olynyk, the Toronto Raptors forward who, at 33, is one of the Canadian team’s veterans. “It doesn’t work like that in the basketball world anymore.”
So if parity is the new normal in international men’s basketball, why hasn’t Canada fared better since 2000? Measured by NBA participation, Canada is the second-best men’s hoops nation on Earth, trailing only the U.S. But until last summer, Team Canada’s international results at the senior men’s level said something else. They reached the quarterfinals of the 2000 Olympics, and never again advanced that far in a global championship until last summer’s FIBA World Cup.
The program has made progress. They narrowly missed a spot in the 2020 Olympic tournament, bumped from contention when point guard Tomas Satoransky of the Czech Republic sank a last-minute jump shot to eliminate Canada from a last-chance qualifier.
Then came the summer of 2023, a roster laden with NBA talent, and a loss to Serbia in the semifinals FIBA World Cup. From there, a showdown with the U.S. for the bronze medal, and a 127-118 win that was an upset but not quite a surprise from a national team whose output finally matched its NBA credentials. Gilgeous-Alexander averaged 24.5 points and 6.5 assists through the tournament. Both figures led team Canada. Dillon Brooks slid easily into the role he plays in the NBA — half defensive stopper, half provocateur — but also blossomed into an offensive threat, scoring 39 points in that bronze medal win.
The U.S., of course, has retooled since then. Young standouts like Tyrese Haliburton and Anthony Edwards return from a World Cup unit that amounted to a U.S. B-team, but the Austin Reaveses of the world didn’t make the cut this summer. In their place, the U.S. added top-tier stars like LeBron James, Steph Curry and Jayson Tatum. That edition of Team USA handled Canada 86-72 when the two teams met in Las Vegas on July 10.
So the gap between Canada and international basketball’s super elite teams is closing, but it still exists.
For now.
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Earlier that afternoon, news of Andrew Wiggins’ absence from Team Canada’s training camp had gone public. After initially giving Wiggins the thumbs-up to play in the Olympics, the Golden State Warriors executed a last-minute pivot, revoking their permission, citing the 29-year-old forward’s health.
When he met with the media after practice, senior men’s national team general manager Rowan Barrett made clear that even though he wasn’t pleased with the Warriors’ decision, and wanted Wiggins on this edition of the team, they were prepared to proceed without him.
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“From what I can see, this was not an Andrew decision. This was from the team,” said Barrett, who averaged 12.7 points playing for Canada at the 2000 Olympics. “Most of all, I’m disappointed for him.”
Part of the reason Barrett isn’t sweating his absence?
Depth. Of the 12 players who made team Canada’s final roster, 10 are currently on NBA rosters, and all but one have significant NBA experience. On day two of training camp, Zach Edey, the 7-foot-4 Toronto native and Memphis Grizzlies draftee, opted out of Olympic duty to concentrate on training for his rookie season. Barrett and head coach Jordi Fernandez had to take Edey’s absence in stride, too. A roster full of NBA veterans helps.
Post-practice, the youngsters mingled with incumbents from last summer’s bronze medal-winning squad, and with Jamal Murray, who sat out the World Cup but is set to play in the Olympics. Like their rivals from the U.S., Team Canada had also upgraded. At the close of day one of training camp, the players’ mood, like the music at practice, was upbeat.
“With the guys who were here last year, you can see it’s coming back faster, becoming a second nature kind of thing,” Olynyk said. “You build that cohesion, that chemistry a little bit. That’s what it takes on this level.”
The next day camp shifted to the OVO Athletic Centre, with a few members of Canada’s past Olympic teams present at both venues to encourage, support, and dispense advice about the Olympic experience to the current team.
“A lot of guys were playing a long time ago. There’s been little timbits here and there,” said Brooks, who averaged 12.7 points and 3.4 rebounds for the Houston Rockets last season.
Did Brooks mean to say “tidbit”?
Probably.
But was his very Canadian Freudian slip an apt way to capture this team’s distinctive north-of-the-border character?
Absolutely.
Superficially, the group looks like many other pro basketball teams — 11 Black guys, one white one, nearly all of them impossibly tall.
But they also embody a uniquely Canadian range of backgrounds. Several players are first- or second-generation Canadians with Caribbean backgrounds, while Trey Lyles is the Saskatoon-born son of an American dad and a Canadian mom. Brooks is a Mississauga native whose family is from East Preston, a historic Black community in Nova Scotia, and he, along with Khem Birch, a Montreal native with Nova Scotian heritage, might have the deepest Canadian roots of anybody on the team.
Head coach Jordi Fernandez is at the opposite spectrum. Born and raised in Spain, Fernandez is a veteran NBA assistant who landed the Brooklyn Nets’ head coaching job in April, and has guided Team Canada since taking over from former Raptors coach Nick Nurse last June.
“It’s an honour to represent a country,” he said. “I believe that you have to buy in … In this case it’s a program, a federation, and a country. I want to earn everyone’s respect doing my job.
“I want everybody to look at what we’re doing and be proud of the team.”
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Later in the second quarter of that tuneup against Puerto Rico, Canada’s in its half court offence, on the attack. From the right wing Gilgeous-Alexander passes to Luguentz Dort and works an old-fashioned give-and-go, receiving the return pass as he glides toward the basket. When a Puerto Rican defender moves to cut him off, Gilgeous Alexander lays the ball off to Dwight Powell, who finishes the play with a monstrous dunk to extend Canada’s lead.
The individual skills on display in that sequence are a given. Gilgeous-Alexander has made two all-NBA teams, and Powell plays for the Dallas Mavericks, who just lost to the Boston Celtics in the NBA final. But that kind of seamless teamwork can also make the difference between playing in the Olympics, contending for a medal, and actually winning one.
Experts think it’s a strong possibility.
As of Tuesday, according to Sportsbook Review, Canada faced +1100 odds to win Olympic gold, trailing only the U.S. It’s another way of saying bookies predict a silver medal, and that Canada, which failed to qualify for the last Olympic tournament, will enter this competition with expectations.
If those expectations bring pressure, Gilgeous-Alexander says he and the rest of the team are equipped to handle it.
“We don’t really worry about expectations,” he said. “We know that doesn’t get us anything. We gotta work for it. We gotta earn it. That’s what we’re focused on. Earning it.”