From promise to pain, Canadian men's basketball team endures all-too-familiar fate in Paris
'The Basketball Gods were not smiling upon Team Canada here today,' says ex-president Grunwald
This Canadian men's basketball team was supposed to be different.
Instead, the same old story unfurled in Tuesday's 82-73 quarterfinal loss to France at the Paris Olympics.
You could compare it to 2016 and 2021 Olympic qualifiers, when Canada lost heart-breaking games to Venezuela and the Czech Republic — contests they entered as favourites, but lost due to some combination of a lack of experience and surprise contributors on the other side.
Those Olympics marked the last time the men's team reached the Games. The goal now is to ensure it is not another 24 years before it happens again.
Former Canada Basketball president Glen Grunwald, speaking with CBC Sports minutes after the final buzzer, sounded gutted.
Grunwald, who still works with the organization as an advisor, said it was "a tough loss."
"International basketball is hard. We got dealt a tough hand today, playing in front of the raucous home crowd in France and we obviously got a very bad whistle. And we just didn't make shots. We didn't play quite as well as we needed to," he said.
"Obviously the basketball Gods were not smiling upon Team Canada here today."
Slow start dooms Canada
The fans in Bercy Arena did appear to be deafening — so much so that Canadian players seemed to have trouble hearing each other and communicating on both ends.
By the time France took a 19-5 lead just over seven minutes into the first quarter, there was no reeling the crowd back in.
Canada fought to get back in the game, but never came within one possession of tying France.
And, just like that, a promising Olympic tournament went up in flames.
The Hamilton, Ont., native said he was still trying to dissect what went wrong after the game.
"I have no clue. We all wanted to win. We're in this together. We don't know, but we'll learn from it," he said.
Mathias Lessort and Guerschon Yabusele played the role of unlikely heroes for France as Canada had no answer for their strength in the post. While NBA stars Rudy Gobert and Victor Wembanyama combined for just seven points, Lessort and Yabusele totaled 35 — not to mention 20 from another role player in Isaia Cordinier.
Their contributions contained shades of naturalized Czech Blake Schilb erupting for 31 points out of nowhere at the Tokyo qualifying tournament in Victoria three years ago.
In 2015, Canada won seven games in a row before losing the one that mattered by one point to Venezuela and missing its shot at Rio.
"That's the nature of the sport. … But hopefully we'll do a good review and learn from this and be that much more committed next time around," Grunwald said.
'Not our day today'
The positive view of Paris — which requires intense squinting to see in the immediate aftermath of a devastating loss — is that the tournament represented progress in a way.
Canada beat three strong programs in Australia, Greece and Spain in the group stage, then received a bit of a bad break by drawing the home team in its first knockout game.
"I think it was not our day today, but it could have been our day and we would have been playing for a medal over the rest of the week. But that didn't happen. So now we've got to again regroup and refocus our energies and start the process over again," Grunwald said.
The Canadians will enter the next quadrennial now full of international basketball experience — it doesn't get much harder than facing France in Paris, and having the opponents shoot 42 free throws in a 40-minute game.
There's still a star in Gilgeous-Alexander, and other young players like guard Andrew Nembhard and wings Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort who should still be able to impact winning basketball come the Los Angeles Games in four years.
The status of Jamal Murray, the supposed co-star, is murkier after he missed last year's World Cup and looked far from his best or healthiest in Paris. Murray's lacklustre performance may linger as the biggest what-if for Canada in these Games.
Meanwhile, Andrew Wiggins was absent from Paris, as was rookie big man Zach Edey, who should fill a need in the middle for Canada moving forward.
"Obviously there's some noteworthy players that weren't playing, but at the same time, I think we had enough talent on the team to make it to the podium this time around," said Grunwald, who also works as a consultant with the Memphis Grizzlies, the team that chose Edey ninth overall in June's NBA draft.
Canada's last Olympic basketball medal came in 1936. Now, it'll be at least another four years.
"It's the best basketball players in the world. It's a very hard tournament, if not the hardest. Once you get to the elimination round, everything matters a little bit more," Gilgeous-Alexander said.
"We'll be more prepared for that next time."
