Canada needs quick answers
It was perhaps too much to ask for decisive moves to be made just a few hours after another disappointing international basketball season for the Canadian men’s team ended.
There has to be much thought and careful deliberation and deconstruction done to figure out what went wrong and why and how a problem that may be unfixable can be corrected.
But the immediate reaction of suggesting things will magically get better without any bold moves, that the same old thing next summer will somehow magically change things, seems a bit disingenuous.
General manager Rowan Barrett, on a conference call hours after Canada’s World Cup run ended with an 82-76 loss to Germany, pointed to a handful of factors for another missed Olympic opportunity.
He said it was great that the team has the Raptors’ Nick Nurse on board to “build and strengthen relationships with our NBA players during the year,” perhaps forgetting that’s precisely what recently deposed head coach Jay Triano did while doubling as an NBA head coach and assistant.
And while he lauded the addition of Gord Herbert as a full-time associate coach based in Europe, attracting Canadians who play at the highest level of European basketball is the absolute least of the program’s problems.
Barrett pointed to injuries — and the ones to Kelly Olynyk and Oshae Brissett did affect this team late in its preparation — but the issue with earlier injuries to R.J. Barrett and Jamal Murray was that there were no other NBA veterans able, or willing, to replace them.
He also said the allure of the Olympics — and Canada will have a chance next July to earn a berth in the Tokyo Games — might entice more players, but that’s hardly a proactive approach to changing the message that is being delivered or the relationships that are not being built.
Suggesting that the rest of the world can’t get all of its top players to commit? Who cares about the rest of the world, this is a Canadian problem that has to be worked from the top level of Canada Basketball on down.
No, those answers weren’t answers, they were explanations and excuses, and fans can only hope that when the top thinkers of the game gather soon to solve this riddle.
“I don’t have a plan to resign at this point,” Barrett said on the call from Shanghai. “We’ll be going home and looking at what we’re doing … Our main focus has been to work with this team now and, as we get home, we’ll continue to work on this team going forward.”
The galling part is that Canada wasn’t 10 NBA guys away from having a very good team capable of qualifying already, or even six or seven players short.
Three, maybe four key NBA talents — a bit more consistent shooting, an inside offensive presence, some depth — probably would have been enough.
There is no doubt emerging international talents like guards Kevin Pangos and teenage Andrew Nembhard are more than capable of holding their own at the world level, Kyle Wiltjer is the kind of big-man shooter who can make a difference in a game and, with perhaps subtly lessened roles, the likes of Khem Birch and Melvin Ejim would be even more valuable.
The blame, if that’s the right word, can be shared. Most certainly the various players who thumbed their noses at the national team program have to be and will be held accountable. But Canada Basketball also has to shoulder some of the responsibility because whatever message they’ve been delivering hasn’t been getting through.
As Barrett said, the need to dissect what went wrong this summer needs to start immediately. It may sound like a ways off but the final Olympic qualification tournament is 10 months away. An early start — getting feedback from players who haven’t played and their agents and NBA teams that have worked against Canada — is paramount.
It will be hard to earn a Tokyo spot now. Canada will have to win a six-team tournament and the level of competition will be tremendous. No one knows how FIBA will ultimately decide who plays where and when, but countries like Lithuania, Greece, Serbia, Croatia and Latvia — plus two of Serbia, France, Spain, Czech Republic and Poland — will be pursuing spots. Continental teams like Brazil, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Dominican Republic will all be ranked higher than Canada coming off better finishes the World Cup.
The job will be more difficult than it was to qualify out of the World Cup, truth be told, and there need to be quick answers to hard questions.