HARSH LESSON
Canada’s crushing loss to Venezuela will sting for some time but the lessons learned will serve them well in the future,
MEXICO CITY— Bitterness. Anger. Disappointment. Sadness.
The emotions coursing through Canada Basketball today are many and varied, the senior men’s team having blown a glorious chance at the Rio Olympics, delivering a crushing blow to end a joyous10-day run at the FIBA Americas championship.
Eventually those feelings will fade though, lives will go on, the promise of a bright future will once again come back into focus.
It was a team that in some ways over-achieved, in some ways was a failure, in some ways got what it deserved.
The ‘We wuz robbed’ narrative concerning the last phantom foul in the Venezuela game is a nice talking point and has some legitimacy as the call was questionable and bogus, but it was no more egregious than the dozen or so careless Canadian turnovers, the moments lacking in hustle and intensity in that 79-78 loss Friday night.
To give it too much credence is to ignore the one salient point to come out of the game. Which is, the kids played like kids, tight and poorly and a bit overwhelmed. And while it was surprising given Canada’s run through the first two rounds of the tournament, it was not a shock.
In Saturday’s bronze medal game, Canada finished on a winning note as Cory Joseph of the Raptors hit an off-balance shot at the buzzer for an 87-86 win.
But Canada was not truly tested in its seven-game winning streak, everything came so astonishingly easy after an opening day loss to Argenti- na that the one-point loss to Venezuela was, to many, unfathomable but this team, this era of Canadian talent, was never supposed to be dominant right away. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of the competition and the highest levels of international basketball went into the summer realizing this was a first step in a process that should reap its greatest benefits at the 2019 World Cup, the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and even beyond.
That’s when many of the players will have reached their late-20s and early-30s and will hopefully have amassed the experience necessary not to be overwhelmed by the moment as they were on Friday.
This group of young players — vastly inexperienced compared to the Argentinas and Venezuelas of the FIBA Americas — played well for long stretches and were deep and skilled. If it lacked that killer instinct — up seven with about three minutes to go Friday — it was because they’d never had to close out a crafty opponent in the late stages of a tight game, a skill teams need to learn, not one that comes automatically.
It is not impossible to see Canada still qualifying for the Rio Olympics, even if the job is far harder now. The bitter feelings and lingering disappointment of Friday shouldn’t do anything but harden a group that cowered in its first true test.
Canada Basketball officials were pondering Saturday making a bid to host one of the three six-team tournaments in July that will determine the final three Olympic teams.
The cost — more than $2 million according to sources — would be substantial for an organization not flush and one that has to take care of a senior women’s program that has already qualified for the Olympics with legitimate medal aspirations.
The field for each of the tournaments remains to be set. FIBA is likely to use its ranking system to allocate spots in each, but with at least five teams from Europe among the 18, the depth will be exponentially greater than in the FIBA Americas tournament.
And who will be on a Canadian team remains a question and will be until just before it begins. Tristan Thompson, for instance, would be a valuable addition but if he plays this NBA season on a one-year deal with the Cavaliers, he will be an unrestricted free agent likely looking for a $100 million (U.S.) contract when the July 5-11 tourneys roll around.
The players are committed to the program, they like the idea of being part of this Golden Age of Canadian basketball, trail blazers, and the truth is this setback will give them more resolve.
The moral of the FIBA Americas is that they will be better off for it, that the disappointing way that it ended will make them stronger and more resilient, more used to circumstances and situations that they had no inkling of before Friday night.