Draws announced for Paris Olympic basketball tournaments
The NBA-dominated Canadian basketball team now knows the path it must take to win its first Olympic medal since Victoria players Doug Peden and Art and Chuck Chapman led Canada to silver at Berlin in 1936.
Canada, which has qualified for the Olympics for the first time since being captained by two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash of Victoria in 2000 at Sydney, will play 2020 Tokyo Olympics bronze-medallist Australia in Group A on July 30 in the 2024 Paris Olympics. Canada’s other two opponents in the group will be the winners of the last-chance qualifying tournaments to be held in Valencia, Spain, and Piraeus, Greece. Those games for Canada go July 27 and Aug. 2 at the Games in Paris.
Canada was upset by the Czech Republic and failed to qualify for the delayed Tokyo Olympics in a similar lastchance tournament held at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre in 2021 but rebounded to go through the front door for Paris 2024 by winning the bronze medal last year in the FIBA World Cup.
The Canadians avoided the U.S., which will include all its headline NBA stars, and was drawn into Group C.
The Canadian women’s team, which will hold its pre-Paris Olympic training camp and exhibition games in Victoria, were drawn into the female tournament Group B against host France on July 29, Australia on Aug. 1 and Nigeria on Aug. 4.
The men’s and women’s Olympic draws were conducted Tuesday by FIBA in Switzerland.
The Paris 2024 Olympic basketball tournaments for men and women run July 27 to Aug. 11 in France with the group stages to be played at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy in Lille and the playoff rounds at the Bercy Arena along the Seine in downtown Paris.
There are three groups of four teams each in both the men’s and women’s tournaments. The first- and second-place teams in each group, and the two best third-place teams, will advance to the playoff rounds.
Canada’s last playoff-round appearance in men’s hoops was during the last time it played in the Olympics, at Sydney in 2000 with SMUS-grad Nash and former UVic Vikes star Eric Hinrichsen of Campbell River losing in a quarter-finals heartbreaker to Tony Parker and eventual silver-medallist France.
Canada’s previous Olympic playoff-round appearance to that was in 1984 at Los Angeles when former UVic Vikes greats Gerald Kazanowski, Greg Wiltjer and the late Eli Pasquale beat Italy in the quarter-finals before losing to Michael Jordan and the U.S. in the semifinals and Yugoslavia in a tight bronze-medal game.
The mercurial shooting-guard Billy Robinson of Chemainus led Canada into the playoff round of the 1976 Montreal Olympics before losing to Dean Smith’s U.S. team in the semifinals and the Soviet Union in the bronzemedal game.
The Canadian women come into their Victoria camp this summer headed to their fourth consecutive Olympics and eighth overall since women’s basketball debuted in the 1976 Montreal Games. The Canadian women were quarter-finalists at London in 2012 and Rio in 2016.