Missing at Olympics from Canada basketball: The word Team

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PARIS — One day later, the sting of the Canadian men’s basketball calamity at the Summer Olympics hasn’t lessened. The hurt will go on.

The lessons that come from so raw a defeat — of talent unfulfilled — will continue from now until the next opportunity comes for Olympic participation.

Being the second-best basketball country in the world means little today when there are four teams still playing for gold and Canada isn’t one of them. The questions that need to be asked now by Canada Basketball are many — and the answers won’t come quickly or easily.

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Everything Canada wasn’t at the Olympics reminds me of everything that Finland happens to be in hockey: They never have the best players. They just have the most competitive pound-for-pound teams in almost every tournament they enter.

They are a team. The style of play is dictated by the name of the country. It is established. It is built in. It is understood. There is a Finnish way to play. And it works.

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Team Canada in Paris, even with three wins in three games in the round-robin, never looked like a team that was right. Never seemed to have a style of play other than tenacious defence. They never had a bench that contributed much. They never had an outside shooting game. They never had a half court offence that seemed natural. They never had a way to deal with physical and strong rebounding teams, even with Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort in their lineup.

They had 10 NBA players on their roster. One an all-star and MVP candidate. One an NBA champion who had a brilliant playoffs two years ago. Two are superb defenders. One a slasher playing the wing, who has averaged 20 points a game for four straight seasons.

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Who else but Team USA had this array of talent?

Talent yes. Team no.

The three teams Canada beat in the improperly named Group of Death have all been eliminated.

None will play for a medal here.

Canada was beaten by the host country, France, beaten by also-ran named Evan Fournier, who has played 12 years in the NBA, the last five with four different teams. He averaged 7.2 points for the rather awful Detroit Pistons last season.

He took Canada apart on Tuesday.

He couldn’t start for Canada.

Neither could Isaia Courdinier, who plays for Virtue Bologna and Guerschon Yabusele, who played a minute or so with the Boston Celtics, and has spent eight seasons in the Euro League, a lot of that time with Real Madrid. Canada couldn’t seem to control Yabusele or the inside play of Mathias Lessort, who has been around Europe for 10 years on nine different teams.

None of them are named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who in fairness, was one of only two Canadians who played to their talent level of expectation in the tournament. R.J. Barrett can say the same thing over four games.

Who else played good or great against France? Or before that. Nobody.

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If Jamal Murray was a hockey player, the first question asked after Canada was eliminated would have been: Is Jamal Murray hurt?

The answer apparently is no.

And that’s worse that it being yes. Murray scored 24 points for Canada. That’s not in one game. That’s in four games.

He was a minus-23 on the court, couldn’t shoot, couldn’t make plays and when coach Jordi Fernandez trusted him to bring some offence late against France, Murray delivered next to nothing. It was almost hard to watch an apparently great player being this ineffective.

The same was true of Brooks against France, after a solid round robin. He tried to bring his game-changing physical energy to the bout but couldn’t make a shot. And down the stretch, when Canada needed someone other than Gilgeous-Alexander to make a bucket, there wasn’t anyone to do so.

This is where the lack of bench performance wound up hurting Canada badly. Fernandez liked to bring either Murray or Andrew Nembhard off the bench, along with captain Kelly Olynyk. Murray had four below average games Nembhard has one great game here. Olynyk looked like he didn’t belong in a tournament of this calibre.

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And it wasn’t just him, it was Gilgeous-Alexander’s cousin, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, who scored three points in four games and was supposed to bring a shooter’s mentality to Team Canada. In the few minutes he played, he was minus-18.

In the most recent NBA playoffs, Alexander-Walker hit nine threes for the Minnesota Timberwolves in four games against the Phoenix Suns. In four games here for Canada, none.

Either coach Fernandez didn’t have the depth coming off the bench, despite having NBA players who almost all play significant minutes, or he never found the right rotation or the confidence in those to find a bench that could contribute.

And now, there has to be questions about Fernandez. He was the accidental coach after Nick Nurse and got them to the Olympics. And he got them beaten at these Olympics. And is he the best coach for Canada for the next four years and into the Los Angeles Olympics, assuming Canada qualifies for 2026?

That will need to be determined among the numerous issues Canada Basketball will have to be addressed in the wake of the debacle against France.

Having the second best roster at the Olympics didn’t amount to having the second-best team. What we need to know now is: Why?

steve.simmons@postmedia.com

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