The team that won bronze at the FIBA Basketball World Cup was excellent. It was the best group Canada had ever put on the floor.
They qualified for the Olympics and achieved a high water mark in international competition for the men’s program.
The team that general manager Rowan Barrett and head coach Jordi Fernandez have at the Olympics in France right now is better.
There are four new faces, all with NBA pedigree: Jamal Murray, Andrew Nembhard, Trey Lyles and Khem Birch.
On Friday, the wisdom of making those additions was evident as Canada’s second-best player (after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but what else is new) was Nembhard, the 24-year-old guard who just finished his second season with the Indiana Pacers.
Nembhard isn’t new to Canada Basketball—he was a regular on age-group teams, trained in the organization’s development academy, and made his senior team debut at the World Cup in 2019—but he’s new to this group and to Fernandez, and it may have taken him a couple of games to fully feel at home.
He looked ready to move in after he erupted for 18 points on 8-of-10 shooting in 21 minutes of playing time off the bench for Canada in a hard-fought 88-85 win over Spain that gave Canada a perfect 3-0 record in group play. It should serve them well as the seeding gets organized heading into the quarterfinals on Tuesday with one more day of group play remaining. Canada is guaranteed to be among the top three seeds heading into the quarters and could be higher depending on Saturday’s results.
Having new additions, the calibre of Nembhard bodes well.
“Yeah, I mean, it’s trying to get a new feel for new players, and I’m playing with a new team, running new stuff, so it’s always going to take time to adjust,” Nembhard said in Lille after the game. “But I feel super confident every time I step up out there with the ball in my hands.”
The win eliminated Spain – a traditional powerhouse ranked second in the world and who Canada has beaten in consecutive summers – and should allow Canada to avoid meeting Team USA until a gold medal final, not to count too many chickens.
But the idea of Canada winning an Olympic medal or facing off for gold is only possible because the men’s team is showing itself definitively to be more than Gilgeous-Alexander and his band.
Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 20 points on 7-of-11 shooting and would have had a bigger night had he not been an uncharacteristic 9-of-13 from the free-throw line, but he had all kinds of help. Canada’s team defence showed up as it held Spain to just 10-of-36 from three and forced 15 turnovers, leading directly to 21 Canadian points.
Nembhard was the new face at the party on Friday as he got rolling with a coast-to-coast transition lay-up that followed a nice touch pass for a Lyles three in the closing minute of the first quarter.
A little bit of positive feedback seemed to benefit the Pacers guard, who played well in some long minutes when Gilgeous-Alexander was in early foul trouble against Australia but saw more shot attempts roll off than roll in.
“I think Andrew’s done a great job,” said Fernandez in Lille. “He wasn’t with us last year and he’s with us this year, and I think he’s had a great performance. So we’ve always talked about being the X-factor when you have so many great NBA players that they have different roles in their NBA teams, and they come here, and they’re asked to do something else and play fewer minutes. Just the fact that they are selfless and they do whatever it takes for the team to win. That means the world for not just the rest of the team but for the program.”
Nembhard was full gas in the second quarter. He hit a pair of threes off set-ups from Murray early in the second quarter and helped spark Canada to arguably their most complete 10 minutes of the tournament so far. They rode a 30-19 advantage to a 49-38 edge heading into halftime.
They needed every advantage they could get against Spain, which has been the most accomplished basketball program in the world other than Team USA for over 20 years but is finally showing signs of fraying. The Spaniards mounted a vigorous comeback that was quite literally all-or-nothing: win and they would win Group A and advance to the quarterfinals for the sixth straight time at the Olympics, a stretch that has yielded two silvers and a bronze. Lose, and their tournament would be over.
After another transition basket by Nembhard put Canada up by 10 early in the fourth quarter, Spain began clawing back. Spreading the floor, they were able to generate chances at the basket or open threes—especially when Canadian head coach Jordi Fernandez stayed small to match up. Spain benefitted by gaining a 17-8 edge in offensive rebounds against a Canadian defense that was often scrambling to keep up.
In the end, Canada outlasted Spain as they got just enough crucial buckets—a runner by Nembhard in the lane with 2:09 that put Canada up three, and a corner three by RJ Barrett with 39 seconds left that put them back to five again—to keep Spain at enough distance.
A pair of Gilgeous-Alexander free throws with two seconds left, after a Sergio Llull triple had pulled Spain to within one, finally iced it.
It wasn’t exactly how Canada would have drawn it up—Spain had them on their heels for much of the fourth quarter—but the team weathered it, thanks in large part to the contributions of one of its new faces.
Notes:
• Lu Dort didn’t score a point for Canada, which is usually not a good indicator for a starting guard, but it’s hard to over-estimate how impactful he was, especially in the first half. The burly Montreal guard made life miserable for Spain’s starting point guard, Lorenzo Brown, who finished with five turnovers and eventually had to take a seat on the bench before Dort devoured him whole. At the start of the third quarter, when it seemed like Canada might blow Spain out, Dort’s ability to stay attached to ball handlers and not get screened led directly to a pair of Brown turnovers. Late in the period, Dort was at it again when he almost literally blew up a dribble hand-off Spain was trying to execute – bursting through the action like a linebacker exploding into the backfield — resulting in Spain not having enough time to get a shot off. It wasn’t just on the ball, either. Midway through the third quarter, he drew the fourth foul on Spanish centre Willie Hernangomez merely by aggressively boxing him out. There’s a reason Dort is plus-41 for the tournament while scoring just 19 points.
• Jamal Murray has yet to find his scoring touch for Canada. Through three games he’s averaging just 5.7 points a game and shooting only 33.3 per cent, a far cry from the 21.2 points a game he averaged for Denver last season, or the 26.1 points a game he averaged during the Nuggets’ run to an NBA championship in 2023. But Murray deserves plenty of credit for being such a crafty and willing playmaker while coming off the bench for Fernandez. He had six assists in just 20 minutes against Spain and leads Canada in the category. At some point, Canada will likely need ‘playoff Jamal’ if they are going to win a medal and almost certainly if they have dreams of winning gold, but as he gets his game up to speed his willingness to look for others and play within the team looks good on him.
• Canada is living up to the hype. The question has always been what Canada would do if and when they ever got all – or most – of its NBA talent on one team at once, and after doing it at consecutive global competitions, the answer is that there are a lot of really good teams. Going back to the 2023 World Cup, the Canadian men’s team is 9-2 with a win over Team USA, two over Spain, one over France, one over Australia and another over Latvia. Put another way, Canada is 6-0 against teams ranked first, second, fifth and sixth in the FIBA world rankings, their only blemish a loss to fourth-ranked Serbia in the World Cup semifinal last year. Not bad.
