Canada’s Olympic run ends with heartbreaking quarterfinals loss

TORONTO – In and of itself, Canada falling short of its lofty Olympic aspirations and expectations in the men’s basketball tournament wasn’t entirely surprising.

Disappointing? Sure, but not completely unforeseen.

The Canadian team was certainly capable of finishing on the podium; it came in with the second-best odds of medalling, behind only the overwhelmingly favoured United States.

But in a field loaded with more talent than ever before – a record 51 NBA players scattered across 12 rosters, not including guys with prior experience in the league, or the many battle-tested FIBA vets – nothing should have felt guaranteed. That’s always been the nature of these events. Once you reach the knockout stage, there’s almost no room for error. Have an off night, run into a hot-shooting team or get a bad whistle, and it could be the end of the road. Barring a U.S. loss, no upset is ever truly shocking.

For Canada Basketball, its players and its fans, the sting comes from the way their Olympic run ended on Tuesday, with an uninspiring effort in a lopsided 82-73 quarterfinals loss to the host team, France.

 Canada never led and trailed by as many as 19 points. The game wasn’t out of reach until the final moments, at least that’s why you could tell yourself after watching Nikola Jokic and Serbia overcome a 24-point first-half deficit to beat Australia in overtime a few hours earlier. But the Canadians were fighting an uphill battle from the opening minutes, and it was a hole of their own digging.

After averaging 89 points through the first three games of the tournament, all wins, it took nearly 10 minutes to score five. The opposition was physical and unrelenting, as you would expect in a must-win game. The raucous crowd was a boon for the home side, which also shouldn’t have come as a surprise. For whatever reason, the visitors weren’t ready for it. They fell behind early, committing seven turnovers and shooting 20 per cent in the opening quarter, and could never recover.

“They were better than us, played harder than us, and we saw it from the jump,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said afterwards. “We obviously tried to make our run in the second half. It wasn't enough, but that's what happens when you let teams get off to a good start. They came out the aggressors, they punched us in the mouth.”

Nothing went according to plan. Canada’s scouting report surely centred around the imposing front-court duo of Victor Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert. Without the size to match them inch for inch and pound for pound, the hope was to counter with elite ball pressure and aggressive, physical defence, like they did when the two teams met in a pre-Olympics friendly last month. Contend with France’s giants and you should be in a winning position, or so they thought.

Instead, Wemby finished with seven points – albeit with 12 rebounds and five assists – and Gobert was a non-factor, going scoreless in just four minutes of action. As it turns out, the Timberwolves centre and four-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year injured his finger in practice earlier this week, but his head coach, Vincent Collet, confirmed that the plan was always to downsize their lineup to match Canada’s speed and athleticism.

It was a bold move, to veer away from your perceived strength as a team during such a critical point in the tournament, but they executed it well and it paid off. While Evan Fournier, a 12-year NBA vet and stalwart of the French program, would take over and put the game away in the fourth quarter, it was three non-NBA players – Guerschon Yabusele, Isaia Cordiner and Mathias Lessort – who combined for 55 points.

On the opposite bench, Jordi Fernandez spent most of the night searching for answers. It had been an impressive tournament for Canada’s head coach, but on Tuesday, he cycled through 11 of his 12 players in the first 16 minutes alone. Gilgeous-Alexander kept them within striking distance with his game-high 27 points, including 11 in succession during the second quarter, but didn’t get much help.

RJ Barrett, the team’s leading scorer in group play, had 16 points, but didn’t come to life until the fourth quarter. Jamal Murray, who was meant to be its second-best player, the Robin to SGA’s Batman, capped off a disappointing tournament by shooting 3-for-13. Andrew Nembhard, fresh off an 18-point performance in last week’s win over Spain, was held scoreless in 15 minutes, and Dillon Brooks, the team’s hottest shooter, went 1-for-9. Lu Dort was solid on both ends of the floor, and once again, Khem Birch gave them good minutes off the bench. But it wasn’t enough.

Look hard enough and you could see some warning signs starting to surface amid their undefeated start to the tournament. They came into Tuesday’s game shooting 34 per cent from three-point range – ranked ninth of the 12 Olympic teams – and their half-court offence looked shaky, at best. It had been buoyed by their perimeter defence and ability to create and score off turnovers. In the loss to France, they shot 5-for-21 from long range and didn’t defend well enough to make up for it. Their lack of size was also exposed, as many feared it would be against the likes of France, Serbia or the U.S.

What was harder to see coming, and what’s harder to accept after emerging from the so-called Group of Death with a perfect 3-0 record, was the degree to which Canada got out-played, out-worked and out-classed on the way to its elimination.

Much of the program’s 24-year Olympic drought could be defined by its missed opportunities. Whenever the stakes went up, they would shrink under the pressure. Last summer was supposed to be a turning point. They showed their resolve at the FIBA World Cup, coming back from a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit in a do-or-die game against Spain to punch their ticket to Paris, and then again in beating the U.S. for bronze. They showed it last week, closing out a couple of tight games against tough teams, Greece and Spain.

But on Tuesday, with a chance to return to the semifinals for the first time since 1984 and compete for their first medal since 1936, they lost their composure. What went wrong, how and why? Fernandez and Rowan Barrett, general manager of the senior men’s team, are charged with getting to the bottom of it over the coming days, weeks and months as they put together a preliminary plan for the next Olympic cycle, leading up to the Los Angeles Games in 2028.

Unlike past cycles, you can’t fault the roster building process. In an attempt to establish some much-needed continuity and cohesion within the program, Barrett and then head coach Nick Nurse secured three-year commitments from many of the country’s best players, and for the most part, those commitments were honoured. Eight of the 12 guys on Canada’s Olympic roster played at the World Cup, and 10 were part of the initial “Summer Core.” The story was never who didn't show up.

Could they have used Andrew Wiggins, who withdrew at the 11th hour for undisclosed reasons? Maybe, although his absence allowed Barrett to flourish as a secondary scorer next to Gilgeous-Alexander, averaging 19.8 points with a true shooting percentage of 70.1. Would the size of 7-foot-4 centre Zach Edey have come in handy? Probably, but he was a long shot to play once he got drafted ninth-overall by Memphis a few days before the start of camp. Ideally, Murray would have been healthier, but he looked like a shell of himself coming off the bench and playing limited minutes; he shot 2-for-14 from three-point range in the tournament and wasn’t able to put his stamp on any of Canada’s games.

But with 10 current NBA players, 11 with NBA experience, and the most talented roster that the program has ever assembled, they had everything they needed to finish on the podium. Coming a couple wins shy of their stated goal is a disappointment, but it’s possible to be disappointed in the result while also remaining optimistic about the future.

Merely getting back to the Olympics for the first time since 2000 is an accomplishment to be proud of, and an important step that shouldn’t be overlooked or discounted. Now, Canada Basketball must regroup for the FIBA World Cup in 2027 and the L.A. Games the summer after that.

As always, that starts with securing commitments. As long as Gilgeous-Alexander is leading this group, it’s hard not to be excited about its upside. The reigning MVP runner-up just turned 26, is under contract with the Oklahoma City Thunder through the 2026-27 NBA season, and has repeatedly expressed his desire to represent his country, so there’s no reason to believe that has changed.

For him and the rest of Team Canada, this was a new experience. Fournier, France’s closer on Tuesday, is playing in his second Olympic Games. Patty Mills, who nearly led Australia to an upset win over Serbia earlier in the day, has competed in five. That experience matters.

Nembhard, who figures to be a key part of the program’s future plans, was able to get his first taste of Olympic basketball, while several others – including highflying Trail Blazers guard Shaedon Sharpe, Pacers guard and Montreal native Bennedict Mathurin, and Timberwolves forward Leonard Miller – were with the team in camp. Keeping those guys in the fold, as well as Edey, will be important. They’ll also have to figure out whether Fernandez, who just took the lead job with the Brooklyn Nets, is able to continue on as head coach.

The hope is that Canada’s young core will learn from the highs and lows of their time in Paris, and that the country’s next generation of Olympians can come in and help build off it.

“I hope that people were proud of us, the way we played throughout the tournament,” Fernandez said. “We wanted to give them more. I think that's what Canadian basketball deserves. There's great tradition. There's a lot of kids playing basketball and you can tell they love to play for their country. So, I wish I could have done better and given them more games, but like I said, this is part of how the Olympics work and these tournaments work. You win or go home, and this one, we're going home.”

“It’s not a good feeling… There's always some disappointment at some point, and you don't know how much you can do until you go through tough times. We’ve had success because we've won a lot of games in the last two years. [But in] these tough times, we cannot forget. We cannot forget how this feels and that's how we move on [from] this.”

“Obviously, it hurts us,” said Gilgeous-Alexander. “[We'll get better from it [and] try it again in four years.”