Canadian men launch quest for World Cup breakthrough
Impressive pool of elite talent hasn’t clicked internationally, but that might be changing
HALIFAX— The process of qualifying for the 2019 basketball World Cup is as much about returning Canada to some semblance of respectability on the international stage as anything.
Despite a huge leap in the quality of talent the country has produced over nearly the past decade, Canada is basically an afterthought in the bigger global picture and the chance to change that begins here Friday night.
The 2019 FIBA World Cup is a long way off, but the process of making Canada relevant on the senior stage has to begin with a bang.
“We’re talking about how far Canada Basketball has come and I think the only thing left for us to do is win at this level,” veteran guard Brady Heslip said here Friday after the team worked out at the Canada Games Centre ahead of its Friday game against Bahamas.
“I think we have to win and we have to prove ourselves and we have to establish ourselves as a top-five, top-10 country in the world. I think that’s where we should be, and this is the first step.”
Canada’s recent international past on the men’s side has been disappointment after failure and failure after disappointment.
Canada did not qualify for the men’s world championship in 2014 and lost all five games it played in the 2010 tournament in Turkey. In 2006 in Japan, Canada was once again on the sidelines when the global championship unfolded and in 2002 at Indianapolis, Canada was 13th among 16 teams. In Greece in 1998, it was an 11th-place finish among 16 teams.
The Olympics? The last time Canada qualified for the Games was in Sydney in 2000. They missed out in 2004, 2008, 2012 and again in 2016.
The reasons for missing out on every tournament were varied and logical at the time: players declined to participate; the opposition was too good; young teams couldn’t handle experienced senior competition. But the bottom line is that Canada has dropped off the international map at the senior men’s level. The country may produce good players, but putting together teams good enough to qualify has been impossible except on rare occasions for almost a quarter of the century.
There has been success in agegroup competition. Canada won its first under-19 gold medal last summer and a bronze at the under-17 worlds in 2010.
“We hope so,” coach Roy Rana said of this being a major first step for the marquee program. “I would say if you looked at our overall record at the senior team level, it’s actually been really, really strong. We’ve had some heartbreaking losses and that’s really been the difference . . . Hopefully we can find consistency and win those big games when we need to.”
Canada faces Bahamas here Friday and plays at the Dominican Republic in the first of six first-round qualifiers for the 2019 World Cup. There are road games at Bahamas and U.S. Virgin Islands in February before the first round finishes with two games in Canada, bracketing the Canada Day weekend next summer.
The team Rana and program general manager Rowan Barrett have assembled looks solid on paper, but translating that to game action is another thing.
One of the good things is that the basketball community in Canada remains small enough that there is already a level of familiarity.
“Every one of these guys I’ve been with at some point in my career, with Canada or wherever,” said Heslip, now in his eighth year with the national team programs. “For me, being one of the leaders and one of the older guys, I feel (it’s important) to make sure the younger guys know what it means . . . Everybody has a pro team and everybody has a job. This is not about who the leading scorer is. It’s just about winning the game. It’s totally different than anything else.”