Canadian men’s basketball team heads into Paris Olympics with high expectations

“It was a little bit devastating, actually.”

In the event you’re a long-time fan of Canadian worldwide basketball, the above quote may imply something. It may consult with every little thing. It’s timeless.

“Slightly devastating” covers plenty of floor for a males’s program that has been to the Olympics as soon as in 36 years and has discovered excruciating methods to overlook out on seven different Olympic tournaments over that point.  And even throughout the glory years of the late Seventies and Eighties, when Canada was routinely an element on the greatest worldwide occasions, the pleasure by no means exceeded the ache. There are few singular shining moments, and lots of extra that resulted in tears.

I imply, should you’re new right here, like, should you solely began paying consideration when Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Dillon Brooks had been tearing Staff USA into small items final summer time on the FIBA Basketball World Cup on their solution to a bronze medal, nicely, transfer alongside.

Get your popcorn, discover a spot on the sofa and get all giddy about Canada opening the Olympics in France in opposition to Giannis Antetokounmpo and Greece on Saturday afternoon, the primary recreation in what remainder of the basketball world had dubbed the “pool of demise.”

In the event you’re like that, then positive, the present version of the lads’s workforce — the perfect by any measure Canada has ever had — looks as if a lock to win a medal and have greater than a puncher’s probability that it finally ends up being gold.

It should be good to be born on third base. Good for you. Agreed, needs to be a enjoyable couple of weeks, these Olympics, and the way about that Summer season McIntosh, can she ever swim!

However for the remainder of us, those with the scars, and the twitches and the vacant, distant seems to be belying many years of trauma and occasional neglect? The subsequent two weeks will probably be a rollercoaster, with hopes rising and falling, white knuckles cramping and the faintest irrational perception that the trip will finish safely and fortunately.

The speaker above, by the best way, the man who was “a little bit devastated,” is males’s nationwide workforce ahead Trey Lyles. In the event you simply confirmed up, that identify most likely doesn’t imply a lot. Is that the man who comes off the bench for the Sacramento Kings? Is he Canadian?

However should you’re a Canada Basketball veteran, if you already know about Eli Pasquale and Leo Rautins and Jay Triano and Dwight Walton and Michael Meeks and Carl English and the brothers Scrubb and the Royal Ejim Household, you already know that Lyle’s mom was from Saskatchewan, which — although he was raised in Indiana and performed on the College of Kentucky — makes him one in every of us.

And you already know what he’s speaking about: the buzzer-beating, wide-open baseline 15-footer drawn up out of a timeout that may have pressured a second additional time in opposition to Czechia within the semifinals of the Olympic qualifying event in Victoria, B.C., in the summertime of 2021. It regarded good out of Lyles’ hand, and it rattled across the rim, desirous to go in and maintain Canada’s Olympic desires alive, however it rattled out. Dream useless, once more.

“I felt like I let the workforce down, let myself down,” Lyles informed me throughout the workforce’s latest coaching camp. “However it occurs.”

It’s occurred to Canada lots in worldwide basketball. Kelly Olynyk slipping on a emblem and turning the ball within the last seconds of a buzzer-beating loss to Venezuela with a spot within the 2016 Olympics so shut you could possibly style it.

That covers the primary two quadrennials of Canada’s long-awaited golden period.

Then there have been the years when Canada merely wasn’t adequate. Failing to even come near qualifying for the Olympics in 2004, 2008 and 2012, Canada fell behind as worldwide basketball surged.

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Even our excessive factors have low factors: Steve Nash sobbing as he left the ground in Sydney in 2000, a magical Olympic event run ending within the quarterfinals after an in any other case unknown French journeyman, Makan Dioumassi, used his muscular, six-foot-five body to show Nash right into a rag doll whereas the dastardly FIBA referees smoked their (undoubtedly free) Gitanes, squinting via blue haze, seeing nothing.

Or again in 1984, when the Canadian males final performed for a medal, solely to attract powerhouse Yugoslavia within the semifinals. Canada had crushed it twice within the preparation for the Video games, solely to come back undone when Drazen Dalipagic, one of many best gamers within the historical past of European basketball — popped off for a tournament-best 37 factors. He retired instantly, Olympic medal in hand.

The most effective Olympic males’s workforce Canada ever had was the group that was purported to go to Moscow in 1980. Leo Rautins was among the finest younger gamers on the earth; Jay Triano was coming into his worldwide prime, and Stew Granger, a degree guard adequate to be a first-round NBA draft choose, was eligible to play. It was a younger workforce lengthy on expertise and two years faraway from ending sixth on the World Championships. A boycott to protest Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan meant we by no means obtained to learn how good that group may have been.

Alternative missed.

That’s been the subtext for Canada in worldwide basketball, particularly on the lads’s aspect, at the least for the reason that males gained silver in 1936, the primary time basketball was on the video games and misplaced to the Individuals in a match performed outdoors, on grime and within the rain.

Now that the newbies are up to the mark, let’s get to the nice half: These days appear to be lengthy gone.

The workforce that takes the ground in opposition to Greece on Saturday will probably be favoured, even in opposition to Antetokounmpo, one of the crucial devastating abilities to ever play the game. They are going to be favoured on Tuesday in opposition to Australia within the second recreation of pool play, although the Boomers gained Olympic bronze in Tokyo three years in the past and have eight NBA gamers. They are going to be favoured in opposition to Spain, the No. 2-ranked workforce on the earth and in opposition to France, the house aspect, silver medallists in Tokyo and who characteristic Victor Wembanyama, essentially the most thrilling younger participant in sport.

It’s as a result of Canada has 11 NBA gamers on its roster, and Gilgeous-Alexander is arguably the second-best participant within the event behind three-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokic of Serbia. Gilgeous-Alexander, Denver Nuggets NBA champion Jamal Murray and Indiana Pacers’ Swiss Military knife Andrew Nembhard collectively could also be the perfect group of lead guards any workforce aside from Staff USA can placed on the ground, and elsewhere, Canada’s roster drips with the form of long-armed, versatile defenders that makes life tough for any form of opponent.

Additionally they have expertise born of a collective determination made two summers in the past in a Las Vegas restaurant to affix a years-long mission to raise Canada to the rostrum of worldwide basketball.

That group — most of whom are on the present roster in France — hasn’t taken a backward step.

“Everybody simply kinda determined to make a dedication to one another, to the nation,” mentioned Nickeil Alexander-Walker, the Minnesota Timberwolves guard who has discovered a vital NBA position constructing on the selfless, defensive-minded method he first purchased into enjoying for Canada. “We had the expertise, and we positively had the fellows that might come and make some noise, which we’ve accomplished thus far. I believe it’s nearly profiting from the chance that’s in entrance of us and understanding the significance and the chance that we had. Everybody simply kinda put their egos apart and determined to volunteer, make that sacrifice and decide to the nation.”

It gained’t be simple. Worldwide basketball is extra like lining up for a sequence of timed impediment course races held at midnight than the comforting predictability supplied by, say, a seven-game NBA playoff sequence. Within the NBA, the perfect workforce virtually at all times wins. Internationally, the place the video games are simply 40 minutes lengthy, the three-point line is way shorter, thus making extra gamers a menace and the place the refereeing can swing wildly from recreation to recreation, and the place each recreation is one thing akin to single elimination, stuff occurs.

Triano, the assistant coach for the Sacramento Kings and former nationwide workforce star and head coach, has spent almost 45 years across the worldwide recreation. It’s formed his basketball life.

He coached males’s nationwide workforce normal supervisor Rowan Barrett in Sydney in 2000 when Canada simply fell quick and coached a younger workforce of budding NBA expertise that had their hearts damaged in Mexico Metropolis by Venezuela in 2015. He virtually had an Olympic medal in his fingers as a participant in 1984 in Los Angeles, up by two with three minutes left, and noticed it get snatched away. He’s been a mentor and casual sounding board for present males’s workforce head coach Jordi Fernandez throughout this newest trip.

All these years and all these shut calls have been distilled right into a single fact:

“It’s gonna be thrilling to observe,” he informed me the opposite day by cellphone from Sacramento. “However you already know what it comes all the way down to? It’s all gonna come down to at least one recreation that’s going to find out a matchup, or one recreation that’s going to find out should you do or don’t advance, or should you do or don’t win a medal. And it’s most likely going to come back down to at least one or two performs in that one recreation. However it’ s going to come back down to at least one recreation and we obtained to verify we win that one.”

That truth has haunted the Canadian males’s program so many instances over so a few years.

However there’s cause to imagine it may be totally different this time. The present group of gamers have carved out significant NBA careers — and even risen to stardom — by spending their complete growth years taking up the perfect gamers from wherever and often kicking their ass.

They’re accustomed to successful within the NBA, essentially the most aggressive league on the earth.

They’re accustomed to successful whereas enjoying for Canada.

“It’s a great feeling. We’ve been at this for a really very long time, [and] lastly obtained right here,” mentioned Gilgeous-Alexander, because the Canadian males had been about to make their Olympic return for the primary time in 24 years. The Oklahoma Metropolis star is scorching on the heels of Steve Nash for the title of “greatest Canadian basketball participant of all time.” He’s already accomplished issues Nash by no means did, and main a workforce to an Olympic medal could be one thing no Canadian basketball participant alive has ever accomplished.

He likes his possibilities.

“We’re pleased, we’re glad, we’re excited, we’re not glad,” he mentioned.

Nobody will get this far in sports activities with out being a “little devastated,” at the least a number of the time. It’s a part of the job description.

Nonetheless, the present technology of Canadian gamers is aware of extra triumph than tragedy. Down double digits to Spain with an Olympic berth on the road? No drawback, give the ball to Shai and watch him flip that frown the other way up.

Heading to additional time in opposition to Staff USA with a medal on the road? Nice! One other 5 minutes to remind the world’s most embellished basketball nation that they are often crushed.

Canada goes to France not with worry however with full hearts and excessive expectations, and so it ought to.

For Canadian basketball, it’s a brand new day.

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