Canadian men’s basketball team laments missed opportunity at Olympics

Time passes, but the disappointment doesn’t entirely fade.

The Canadian men’s basketball team’s hopes of an Olympic medal crashed more than four months ago when they lost their quarterfinal match against host France.

Years and in some cases more than a decade of dreaming that Canada could stand on a podium at the most prestigious basketball tournament in the world ended in the space of 40 minutes with the knowledge that a chance at redemption is a lifetime away, in basketball terms.

“It’s one of those weird things where it’s you can write down on paper and use equations and explain how long four years is intellectually,” said Dallas Mavericks veteran forward Dwight Powell when he was in Toronto recently. “But until you experience it emotionally, that cycle, you don’t really realize how much life takes place within four years.

“So for me, having gone through a few (Olympic cycles) and coming falling short, you realize just how much of your life is going to have to be dedicated to this to get back. It’s something you fear or worry about, but it is something that has to be acknowledged.”

In the space of 72 hours, Canada went from the highest of highs — cruising through the so-called “group of death” undefeated with convincing wins over Greece, Australia and Spain, each one a medal hopeful in their own right — to walking off the floor at the Bercy Arena in Paris, shoulders slumped, ears ringing as the home crowd celebrated Les Bleus’ 82-73 win.

The box score still boggles. French phenom Victor Wembanyama was a non-factor — offensively at least — held to seven points on 2-of-10 shooting with Dillon Brooks doing much of the heavy lifting defensively. Rudy Gobert, France’s most decorated player, was on the floor for less than four minutes and didn’t score a point. Nick Batum, France’s most experienced player, played 33 minutes but didn’t score either. European pro Isaïa Cordinier hit seven threes in the entire Olympic tournament, but four in five tries against the Red and White.

Meanwhile, Canada got strong performances from its two primary offensive contributors, with Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and RJ Barrett combining for 43 points on 15-of-30 shooting, just like head coach Jordi Fernandez would have drawn it up.

But none of the seven other NBA players on the roster — only Team USA had more representation from the world’s best league — could crack double figures in scoring. Jamal Murray and Brooks combined to shoot 4-of-22 from the floor and 3-of-15 from three.

For France it was a pair of burly power forwards, Guerschon Yabusele and Mathias Lessort, who were the difference, muscling their way through Canada’s frontcourt for 35 points, including 23 trips to the free throw line. Yabusele was convincing enough that he parlayed his Olympic showing into an NBA job with the Philadelphia 76ers.

France eventually advanced to the gold medal final, pushing heavily favoured Team USA deep into the fourth quarter before eventually falling victim to a flurry of Steph Curry threes.

“I’m still not over it,” Barrett says of his Olympics experience. “Every time I see Yabusele, I get pissed off.”

The national team’s missed opportunity will likely be a talking point Thursday as Fernandez, in his first season as head coach with the Brooklyn Nets, returns to Toronto for the first time to take on Canada’s NBA team.

Neither the Toronto Raptors nor the Nets have too much compelling going on the NBA side, other than their so-far tepid battle for lottery positioning, with the Nets — 10-16 and sinking — likely hoping to “make up” ground on the 7-20 Raptors, who have lost five straight and are second from the bottom in the East.

The Nets just traded their most effective player, former Raptor Dennis Schroder, to make sure their tank stays on track. The Raptors are expecting Scottie Barnes to return from an ankle injury, but they will be without centre Jakob Poeltl for some time after he strained his groin in an awkward fall on Monday as the team’s never-ending injury woes have driven their lottery-focussed season.

It’s unlikely that the rebuilding Nets will offer Fernandez the moments of high drama the Olympic crucible did.

Perhaps no one associated with the men’s team was in a more difficult position than Fernandez this past summer.  He likely won’t feel that kind of heat this season with the Nets; the stakes aren’t high enough. Conversely, the nature of international basketball and the Olympic tournament especially is that every game is a winner-take-all referendum.

The young head coach was faced with some crucial choices. Against France, for example, he had to decide whether to stick with a clearly struggling Murray or give his minutes to emerging Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, who was coming off a near-perfect game against Spain (18 points on 10 shots in 22 minutes). Whether it was role, lack of fitness, injury or lack of fitness due to injury, the Denver Nuggets star was never quite himself last summer. His desultory 3-of-14 outing in the quarterfinals that capped off an Olympic tournament where he shot 29 per cent from the floor including 2-of-14 from three.

Not surprisingly, Fernandez stuck with Murray — imagine trying to explain why he left Canada’s most proven NBA playoff performer on the bench while trying to mount a comeback on France’s home court — but didn’t get the benefit. Murray hinted later that he was uncomfortable playing off the ball in an offence that featured Gilgeous-Alexander as its fulcrum. For his part, Nembhard was scoreless in his 14 minutes in the quarterfinals.

Fernandez was in a tough position with Murray all summer. On one hand, the Nuggets guard had struggled in the playoff with Denver, dealing with a calf strain after being sidelined during the regular season with a hamstring issue. Murray played limited minutes in the build-up to the tournament, even as he was being integrated into a team that had won bronze at the World Cup. Information was scarce, even players on the roster weren’t apprised of Murray’s status, but it was evident that he wasn’t in peak form when training camp opened and never fully rounded into form.

Fernandez made other tough decisions, such as leaving veteran Kelly Olynyk, Canada’s most skilled big man, on the bench for all but three minutes against France, even as Canada’s offence stagnated. By the same token, had Brooks — who helped Canada to the World Cup bronze with his 39-point explosion against Team USA the summer before — managed more than one field goal in nine tries, Canada might have gone on and played for a medal regardless.

“Our program got beat,” said Canada Basketball president and chief executive officer Michael Bartlett. “This was not about a ‘single’ factor, it was about a multitude of small things, which we can improve on as a program. We got beat and learned some tough lessons from it. … That’s the job: compete, learn, act, compete again.”

No one had much time to reflect in the moment. The buildup took place over nearly a decade, but Canada’s best chance at an Olympic medal came and went in the space of a single game, the reality that any opportunity at redemption lies nearly four years out at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles finally landed.

“I would say it hit more so when we were eliminated,” Gilgeous-Alexander said when he passed through Toronto recently with the Oklahoma City Thunder. “Like the opportunity to medal and win, obviously we didn’t get a chance to do it. (But) being in it, you kind of take it for granted. But every year, I get a chance to win an NBA championship, (but’s only) every four years I get a chance to try to win the Olympics, you know?”

Collectively, there’s an understanding that there was an opportunity that either slipped through their fingers or was snatched from their grasp.

“It’s different once it’s over and you realize that you’re not going to be in that position, not have a chance for four more years,” Barrett said. “Like, that’s a rough part about it, especially when we felt like we had a team that had a great mix. I think we had young guys, but not rookies, you know, and we had guys in their prime or close to their prime, and we had some vets that are still at a good stage in their career. We had the experience, and we had the talent, we got we had the coach. We felt like that was our time, but I think experience, and those type of tournaments is huge.”

Canada has it now, and the best hope is that all of them — the federation, Fernandez, the players who hope to run it back in 2028 — can use that experience as they take aim at righting wrongs from Paris in Los Angeles four years from now.

“The Olympics is a big stage, but I think the learning experience for us came down to the fact that it not only is it a big stage, but it’s also a very unique stage,” Powell said. “There’s no way to replicate it or to gain experience elsewhere that can be applied directly there.

“There’s a lot of learning that can be done through the FIBA game and through windows and through and different competitions along the way, in terms of building team camaraderie in the FIBA game at a national level. But when it comes to the Olympics, it’s its own thing. So I think it was extremely valuable experience for everyone.”