The journey began in Toronto, has now arrived in Germany, picks up again in Spain, runs through Jakarta and — if all goes well — ends up in Manila with a chance to stand on a podium and hear the Canadian anthem playing.
It’s a long journey, with twists and turns guaranteed, but it’s a necessary one for the Canadian men’s national team as they ready themselves for the FIBA Basketball World Cup.
The club gets its first taste of outside competition Wednesday when they suit up against Germany in what should be a solid test against a team coached by former Canadian national team player, coach, and long-time German-league club coach Gord Herbert. The German team features several NBA players, including new Raptors point guard Dennis Schröder, though the veteran guard has an Achilles problem at the moment.
Canada then plays New Zealand before a third game against either Germany or China over the course of a week. From there Canada heads to Spain for a game against the defending World Cup champions and a final tune-up against the Dominican Republic before travelling to Indonesia for their tournament opener against France.
Over in Germany the vibes, apparently, are good. The men’s team had a light workout Monday and a practice Tuesday in advance of the game Wednesday. The long flight was broken up by card games. The group is well on its way to becoming a team.
The multi-million dollar question is whether Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray will be part of it.
The short answer? No one knows for sure, one way or the other.
The team is already down some potential contributors who were part of the 14-member ‘summer core’ that was announced last year. Veteran point guard Cory Joseph won’t be with the team in what is termed a “mutual decision.” Another experienced point guard, Kevin Pangos, had problems with insurance after coming off injuries last season in Europe and is unavailable. Oshae Brissett began to experience some tightness during two-a-days last week and was held out as a precautionary measure, though sources say there’s no injury, in contrast to reports that he had a knee issue.
Brissett, who has a two-year deal with a player option for 2024-25, wants to focus on preparing for training camp and making an impression with the Boston Celtics, his new team.
With the benefit of hindsight would Canada Basketball have been wiser to open up the competition for roster spots a little more broadly? Promising Minnesota Timberwolves incoming rookie Leonard Miller attended camp as an observer but wasn’t in consideration for the final roster.
Similarly, there had been some discussion about having second-year Portland Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe compete for a spot on the World Cup team.
Given the team is light at power forward and short on three-point shooting — areas Miller and Sharpe could help with, respectively — and the way things have shaken out, perhaps opening up the roster should have been more readily considered.
But in the end, it was decided that it would be unfair to players already in the program who were either part of the ‘summer core’ or stalwarts with the group who had helped Canada in qualifying during the winter windows — Phil Scrubb, for example, played in every game during Canada’s 11-1 run through the extended qualifying process — to have new names competing for roster spots.
In reality, it’s really hard to please everybody: keep the roster competition wide open and you risk not getting the commitment or continuity the program has been seeking; keep the pool of players from an established core and the potential is there that you miss out on late changes that could lift the group.
This could be a significant issue next summer if Canada does qualify for the Olympics and the likes of Andrew Wiggins, Bennedict Mathurin or Andrew Nembhard express interest in playing.
But for now, any of those matters pale in significance to Murray’s status for the upcoming World Cup. Canada is projected as the second-most likely winner of the 32-team tournament after Team USA by oddsmakers with Murray joining Shai Gilgeous-Alexander to form — arguably — the world’s best backcourt.
They are still a good team without Murray, but not having the Nuggets superstar closer would be a blow.
Murray himself said — and it’s entirely understandable — that he’s on a different timeline than his NBA peers on the national team roster, all of whom have been out-of-season since mid-April or early May. Murray’s Nuggets won the NBA title in early June. Just recovering from the parade could take a couple of weeks.
Everyone has signed off on a plan where Murray slow-played the build-up to Canada’s opener against France just over two weeks from now, a crucial match-up against one of Europe’s best teams and Canada’s primary competition for first place in Group H.
But ‘no play’ it? Could Murray skip the European exhibition tour altogether and meet the team in Jakarta like a guy showing up late for a men’s league game?
That’s likely a no-go.
Senior national team general manager Rowan Barrett said as much on the opening day of training camp.
“Definitely if you’re going to play in Jakarta, you need to play at some point,” Barrett said while leaving what ‘playing’ means — being available for all the exhibition games, some of them, or one of them — as vague as possible.
So it raised some eyebrows then when Canada Basketball’s release on the subject on Monday said that Murray would “not participate in the upcoming exhibition games [and]will continue to focus on his off-season recovery.”
So does that mean Murray is not going to play?
It would be surprising, based on where everything stood just a few weeks ago. All indications heading into camp were Murray was going to play. Everyone — head coach Jordi Fernandez, Barrett and certainly Murray himself — had plenty of chances to speak plainly about what his intentions are. Even a frank ‘I’m not sure yet’ would have been fine, really.
Instead it’s been a main course of enthusiasm paired with a healthy serving of, ‘who knows?’
“I want to be here, I want to play, I want see the guys, be around the guys, be a part of this,” Murray said during training camp last week. “Everybody knows these are good friends of mine, we’re not just teammates, we’re peers. We all grew up playing against each other, playing with each other so it’s fun to be in this environment and just have fun playing basketball.”
Again, even sources in Murray’s camp say the matter is undecided, though his last message to his teammates when they left for Germany was that he would likely see them ‘soon.’ There is a hope that the Nuggets star will make it to Spain in time to play in at least one of the games there, either against the host nation on Aug. 17 or the Dominican Republic on Aug. 18.
If he does that then it’s hard to imagine a scenario where Murray doesn’t continue on to Jakarta and join Gilgeous-Alexander in the backcourt against France.
But if he doesn’t make it to Spain or appear in any of Canada’s five exhibition games?
Then all bets are off. At some point a team becomes a team and at that stage is it reasonable or fair to have Murray join them nearly a month after everyone else? If it gets to that stage Murray’s status would likely be a matter that the team’s on-court leadership would have a voice on, too.
Regardless, it would set a difficult precedent and potentially put Fernandez and Barrett in awkward positions going forward. It would also be a tough situation for Murray to be in as well. Going from light workouts to the highest level of international competition without even playing an exhibition game is a big ask, particularly with what’s at stake this summer.
The subplot is almost par for the course for the Senior men at this point.
Canada Basketball has created an environment that is as first-class for their players and staff as possible for an organization that is a not-for-profit entity that still relies on government funding, bridging significant funding gaps with sponsorships, corporate support and private donors.
But nothing is guaranteed. Players’ careers only last so long, their bodies can be stretched only so far, and when the choice is between what’s best for their career and their health and what Canada Basketball’s needs are, it’s often not much of a choice at all.
