TORONTO — Twenty-five days, not even a month, until it all starts.
And then? The FIBA Basketball World Cup will be all over just 41 days from the opening of the Canadian Men’s Senior National team training camp in Toronto this week. There will be winners, losers and nations that will have their basketball hearts broken.
The tournament is a sprint to glory, or a race to infamy, playing from late August through early September, many time zones away in Indonesia, Japan, and the Philippines.
The hope this time is that Canada’s beating basketball heart will be bursting. That the wave will be caught, the ride scintillating, the adversity temporary and the triumphs immortal.
The dream is a medal, which would be the first for Canada’s senior men at a global event since they won silver at the inaugural Olympic tournament in 1936. The absolute minimum is that Canada finishes first or second among the seven teams from the Americas in the 32-team field, and thus secures an Olympic berth next summer in Paris.
“(We can do) anything we put our minds to,” said Oklahoma City Thunder star and national team point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. “We’re for sure talented enough. It’s just about us coming together, playing as a team, building camaraderie on and off the court. We’ll be fine.”
The first step was Tuesday, when the best collection of basketball talent to ever pull on a national team jersey were all present and accounted for at OVO Athletic Centre.
A huge win in itself.
For more than a decade men’s national team general manager Rowan Barrett has been trying to make this happen, to get all the best players in the same place at the same time.
It hasn’t been easy. The years he’s pulled it off, the players have — quite frankly — fallen short with close-but-no-cigar finishes in Olympic qualifying events in 2015, 2016, and 2021 sandwiched around a poor showing at the 2019 World Cup.
The last time Canada’s men’s team appeared in the Olympics was in 2000, when Barrett was a rising young European professional. His son, RJ, was born in June of that year and not too long later, Barrett was back on the court and away from home, flying commercial halfway around the world to play with his friends — Steve Nash, RJ’s godfather, among them — to try to win a medal for Canada. They came close, losing just two games, and finishing seventh.
But basketball has changed in the past 20-plus years. And perhaps nowhere more than in Canada. As the country’s pool of NBA talent has grown so too have their commitments and concerns in the off-season. Contracts, injuries, risk of injuries and personal matters have made it hard to get all the best players in the same gym at once. It’s hardly a uniquely Canadian problem but when coupled with Canada’s struggles internationally, it gets noticed.
But Barrett has stuck with it, adjusting with the flow. Even last summer as RJ — now 24 and a four-year NBA veteran with the New York Knicks — was one of several of the young Canadians who couldn’t take the floor for Canada due to contract issues, the elder Barrett worked to make sure that players like him and Lu Dort and Jamal Murray were in camp, being part of the team.
Barrett again was quick on his feet this summer when Nick Nurse had to step down as head coach just last month, finding a well-regarded replacement — Jordi Fernandez — in the space of a week.
So Barrett could certainly have taken some credit when he stepped in the gym Tuesday and saw a roster that — objectively — is one of the most talented in the world going through their paces, finally all in one place.
But it’s too soon to count that as anything other than a good start.
“It’s good, knowing guys are committed, understanding each other, having seen each other, played with each other is good,” was as far as Barrett would allow himself to go Tuesday.
Is he excited?
“I wouldn’t say excitement is the thing for me,” he said. “I’m much more vigilant watching our guys and seeing how things are coming together. I think we have ideas, obviously there’s a lot of work before you see them here on the court. You want to see, kinda, how does it come together, the lineups how they’re put together, how does that look?
“(But) it’s good. Look, I always breathe easier when they’re on the court and I’ll feel better when we get on the plane going to Germany.”
That’s where Canada begins a slate of five exhibition games in preparation for their pool play matches beginning on Aug. 25 when Canada plays France in Jakarta, Indonesia.
For once, no one can question the talent, or the experience, or the commitment. You just had to look around.
In one corner of the gym was Jamal Murray — fresh off an NBA championship with Denver and one of the most clutch players on the planet — who participated in practice but will be on a slow build-up after playing playoff basketball deep into June.
In another was Gilgeous-Alexander, a first-team all-NBA guard at just 25 who should team with Murray to form the best backcourt tandem of any team at the World Cup.
Everywhere your eyes fell there was another pocket of players with significant NBA resumes and lengthy experience with the FIBA game too. Kelly Olynyk started with the senior team in 2010 and Cory Joseph in 2011. Canada will be dressing a roster with 10 NBA players supplemented by long-time European pros with FIBA experience.
“It’s really exciting. Really exciting,” said veteran Canadian big man Dwight Powell, who is entering his 10th NBA season with the Dallas Mavericks and has been trying to get Canada to the Olympics since 2015, when a gifted group fell disastrously short in the semifinals of the tournament of Americas in Mexico City, the first of several heartbreaks in the past decade. “It’s awesome to see everybody show up, ready to work, egos aside, everybody’s locked in on the goal to win, compete for our country and it’s a different energy when everybody shows up on that, With that mindset. So it’s, you can feel it in the building. It’s definitely exciting.”
There are no guarantees. When Nurse stepped down it cost the program four summers of continuity, which is a lot to make up in a month. Injuries and risk of injuries are ever present, though Canada’s depth gives them a little comfort there. As talented as Canada’s team is, it’s not a roster blessed with loads of dead-eye shooting which can be haunting in the collection of win-or-go-home scenarios that occur in international basketball. Murray and Gilgeous-Alexander — the team’s fulcrum — have never shared the floor together and there’s a bit of a logjam at the wing position and a shortage of elite bigs.
But few teams are perfect and this time around Canada can justifiably say that they have the talent to beat anyone.
Canada got its first glimpse on Tuesday in Toronto, and now the world awaits.
