Canada's Jamal Murray, second from the right, and teammates celebrate at the end of the men's preliminary round group A basketball match between Canada and Australia during the Paris 2024 Olympic Games at the Pierre-Mauroy stadium in Villeneuve-d'Ascq, northern France, on July 30.SAMEER AL-DOUMY/Getty Images
In the midst of the Canada-Australia men’s basketball game on Tuesday, there was an indicative sequence involving Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
Gilgeous-Alexander rose to take a two-pointer from the elbow. He was fouled as he did so. It wasn’t called.
He ran down to the other end of the court and blocked a shot against the backboard.
As he ran back his own rebound, he was hip checked. That foul was called, though grudgingly.
Gilgeous-Alexander got up and tried complaining, but he was too winded to mount much of an argument. He kept buckling in the midst of his finger wagging.
And that’s international basketball.
Fortunately, the quality of our Canada was greater than Canada with koala bears. The good guys won 93-83.
After taking its first two games, Canada is virtually assured a place in the knockout round.
Canada’s men’s players have been excellent at basketball for a while now. That has not meant Canada’s men’s team has been good as well.
Gilgeous-Alexander led a revolutionary movement in this country – one where people from here want to give up a few weeks’ vacation to play basketball under the flag. Once a player of his quality made that sacrifice, it became hard for others near his level not to do the same.
That commitment happened two years ago. Two years is nothing in international basketball.
Now that they’ve made an Olympics, everybody wants to come to the party. That does not mean everybody knows the party rules.
Through their first two games, you can see Canada’s young NBA stars coming up to grips with the man’s man game they play elsewhere in the world.
God forbid you travel – a sin so minor in NBA terms that it is flouted with abandon. LeBron James could receive the ball in the parking lot and hot walk it to the basket and he wouldn’t be called.
But brushing a guy during a shot? Setting a moving screen? A pick that looks more like a spear? No problem.
Canada took control in the fourth quarter against Australia and for a while it got worse. As Canada’s Luguentz Dort tried to trail his man on the defensive end, Australia’s Patty Mills set a pick that would start a fistfight in the NBA. Dort fully left his feet, did a 45-degree turn in the air before coming down hard.
In the NBA, Mills is a veteran player who’s just barely hanging on. Here, he’s a an experienced kung-fu fighter who can also hit threes.
The best Australian on the court, Jock Landale, is an NBA back-up who has been on three teams in his three years.
Before anyone starts thinking about the U.S., these are the kind of national sides Canada has to get through. Literally. It must fight them.
Afterward, Canada’s players kept hitting on how much they like each other, and how much fun they’re having.
“We love playing with each other,” Dillon Brooks, who is not noted as a soft touch, told reporters in Lille.
“It’s a lot of fun being in the village and getting to spend time with each other,” said Jamal Murray. “Honestly, that’s my favourite part.”
I’m not doubting anyone here, but long-term professional love affairs are not part a big part of the NBA toolbox. You may admire the guy next to you, but you don’t need to like him. You are bound by a mutual need to succeed. That’s often enough.
Taking the U.S. out of it – it is a special case – the teams who succeed internationally are the ones who know each other best.
Living with MS has not stopped David Blatt from getting into the game with Team Canada
Up next for Canada is Spain, a team it beat to get here. Spain is even shorter on brand names. It’s really more No Name. One of its starting five is in the NBA.
Spain’s advantage is that its players have all been playing together for a donkey’s age. Its captain, Rudy Fernandez, is in his fourth Olympics.
“They’re a team that loves playing together,” said Brooks, which sounds odd coming out of the mouth of a pro.
That’s not something you would say in the NBA or the NHL. You’d say they’re a team that loves playing, full stop.
But different basketball, and also different rules about how to think and talk about it.
Since its third-place run through the world championships, we’ve seen Canada trying to jam years worth of relationship into a few months. Now that it’s here, it’s doing it 40 minutes at a time.
It’s a long way from perfect. A lot of missed communication, sometimes when the guy you expected to be in a spot isn’t there because he’s been rugby tackled back up the court.
It strikes you that where Canada is currently strongest is on man-to-man defence. In the fourth, when it was still tight, the Canadians were able to decide that Australia was no longer allowed to score. So it wasn’t. By the time Australia got its second bucket of the frame, Canada was up by 11 and it was over.
Presuming everyone’s wiling to pass, man to man is as close as it gets to an individual event in basketball.
The question is – can Canada figure out the whole package before it hits someone who has some better players, as well as better shorthand?
After Spain, it’s the knockout rounds, which are reseeded. The iceberg in the water is the U.S.
The American players don’t need to love each other. Given all the egos in that room, they may secretly hate each other’s guts.
If Canada wants to avoid facing that juggernaut straight off, it would be much better to win on Wednesday. Three wins from three could put it in a pot with America, which would guarantee that the two sides cannot face each other until the final.
It would also be better for momentum, chemistry, camaraderie – pick your winning safe word. But until you absolutely have to, the best reason to do it is out of a well-placed fear.
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