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There’s a little bit of Bret Hart to the Canadian men’s national basketball team.
While Dillon Brooks is unquestionably the villain no matter where he goes, the rest of this team — young, likable, flavourful stylistically — is a group most unaffiliated fans would get behind. But if Canada is going to earn just its second Olympic medal ever in basketball, the players will have to do it as travelling heels. That starts with a quarterfinal matchup on Tuesday with the host country, France (at noon ET / 9 a.m. PT), a possible semifinal meeting with Germany, whose fans have travelled well, and a gold-medal matchup with the star-studded American team.
That’s getting ahead of things a bit. One step at a time, and that first step will need to be a long step, a high step, or a very wide Euro-step to get around France’s Victor Wembanyama. How did a 3-0 Canada team end up with a de facto road game against the best young player in the world in the quarters?
The explanation is threefold. First, it’s the cost of Canada’s strong group. The group played to form, and while Canada has graduated to being the reason a group is the Group of Death, and it took care of business by sweeping Greece, Australia, and Spain, there is still a cost. In this case, it’s a depressed plus-minus due to closer games and no blow-out opponent, which made Canada the third-ranked team, behind the United States and Germany, who better padded their point differential with a weaker bottom of the group.
Second, FIBA has a weird seeding wrinkle. Because the tournament is 12 teams instead of 16, and wild cards are introduced instead of just the top two teams in each pool, the quarterfinal matchups are based on a ranking and sorting into pots, then an adjustment to make sure group-stage opponents can’t play each other again so soon. As the No. 3 team, Canada couldn’t play No. 6 Australia, so they get No. 5 France — the other team in Australia’s pot — instead. (At least they didn’t draw into the Americans’ side of the bracket; again, one step at a time.)
And the third reason Canada drew France is that France just didn’t play very well. The French were nearly upset by Japan in a tight overtime game and never really threatened Germany, leaving them 2-1 with barely a positive point differential.
That’s not to say this is an easy draw. Wembanyama and Rudy Gobert are a real problem with their size around the paint, and Wembanyama does something every game you’ve never seen before. They surround those two with a bit more shooting than Canada has, and they’re reasonably smart about protecting the ball. Still, this is a France team that doesn’t rebound at a level you’d expect for their size and, while they have some veteran name value in the backcourt, can really struggle to create offence, or even get smoothly into their sets.
Canada matches up very well here around the perimeter. No, Canada doesn’t remotely have the size to hang inside, but the Canadians have been at a size disadvantage in almost every exhibition and group-stage game. The team’s ball pressure is sustainably incredible, and France’s backcourt could have a lot of trouble initiating offence and getting the ball inside, where Canada will probably swarm aggressively. There will be shot-clock turnovers and live-ball turnovers, the latter of which allow Canada to goose a sometimes sticky offence with its excellent transition play. When France can enter the ball to the elbow and below, though, Canada’s defence has fallen off due to a lack of paint protection.
If there are areas for France to poke, it’s with size and shooting. Those tend to be pretty important, and Canada can get hot from three, but it can’t become seven-foot-five. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander might have to work his mid-range magic more than attacking the rim, and the coaching focus will be how to open up space for him to operate against so much length. Those are real challenges, and they might require head coach Jordi Fernandez to shorten his rotation more than he usually prefers to.
Canada’s point differential would have been stronger, although not strong enough to change its seed, if it leaned on its four primary starters more, and it’s possible Fernandez has kept the minutes of Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, Dillon Brooks, and Lu Dort lower where possible so they can get into the 30s in the knockout stage. That would make bench rotations a bit smoother, especially if the reserve backcourt continues to be hot and cold. That won’t resolve the backup centre question, though, and Fernandez might have to try a few different looks against France’s interior duo.
With the game on the line, Fernandez will almost surely go back to his starting five, a unit that was great together in last year’s World Cup and has a monster plus-33 mark in 25 minutes in this tournament.
In addition to being able to thrive as a heel on foreign soil despite clearly being a baby face on merit, Bret Hart was also pretty good in do-or-die tournament formats. We’ll see if the Canadian men can be excellent in their execution and do the same in Paris.
Germany vs. Greece (5 a.m. ET / 2 a.m. PT)
The defending World Cup champion Germans have looked like exactly that, earning the No. 2 slot in the quarterfinal rankings after cruising through all three of their group-stage games. Dennis Schröder is, of course, a different player entirely in the FIBA game, and Franz Wagner once again looks like an emerging star (despite the somewhat funky change in shooting mechanics). If there are concerns, it’s that Germany grabs fewer rebounds than any team other than Canada, and that while they never turn the ball over, that’s in part because they can be a bit more one-on-one focused on offence at times. From a strength and weakness standpoint, they actually profile fairly similar to Canada, which could make for an interesting semifinal.
Greece, meanwhile, edged Australia to get its first win and nab a wild-card spot. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the headline item, and he’s shown to be the toughest matchup on either end of the floor in the group, and probably the tournament. In advancing, the Greeks have shown they’re a bit more than just Antetokounmpo and a heady lead guard in Nick Calathes; they have a lot of size, and several of their big wings and forwards can shoot it a bit. Still, Greece was the worst 3-point shooting team in pool play, and it’ll need that — and a focus on the offensive glass — to keep up with the Germans.
Serbia vs. Australia (8:30 a.m. ET / 5:30 a.m. PT)
I feel pretty good about my pre-tournament power rankings and which teams I was high and low on. Serbia would be the one team, at least so far, it looks like I overrated a bit. The Serbs opened the tournament getting rinsed by the Americans before hammering Puerto Rico and beating South Sudan in a fun one. There’s no shame in that being your group stage, they just didn’t show quite the top gear I expected after dropping Nikola Jokic onto a roster that’s mostly the same as their 2023 World Cup silver-medal squad. Bogdan Bogdanovic has been lethally efficient and Aleksa Avramovic remains a ball-hawk on defence, offering extra layers of challenge for the Boomers beyond just Jokic.
Australia, meanwhile, survived a pool with Canada, Spain, and Greece on plus-minus. While Spain was their only win, the Boomers gave Canada a tough run for three quarters and only lost to a Greece team that was in a more desperate situation than they were. The game plan for Australia offensively is fairly straightforward — lean on Josh Giddey as a driving initiator and get a little FIBA Patty Mills magic — but it might need more 3-point shooting volume (free Jack McVeigh!) and will absolutely have to clean up its turnover issues. Whichever team emerges here will be an underdog against the U.S.
United States vs. Brazil (3:30 p.m. ET / 12:30 p.m. PT)
The U.S. mainly played to expectation in the round-robin phase. Sure, there are minor concerns, particularly about which starting unit is best, who draws a DNP-CD depending on the matchup, and the health of Jrue Holiday’s ankle. The Joel Embiid awkwardness is there, too, particularly because he’s getting Dominik Mysterio-level heat from the France crowds. Still, no team has a higher peak and no team can touch their defensive best five that probably has LeBron James at the three with Anthony Davis and Bam Adebayo.
Brazil, meanwhile, didn’t exactly ride the momentum of its Olympic Qualifying Tournament victory, looking over-matched against Germany (fair!) and France (less fair) before riding an epic Bruno Caboclo performance against Japan to a wild card. Caboclo against the U.S. is fun, but the Brazilians will need to repeat — and maybe exceed — their ludicrous 17-of-28 mark from three against Japan to variance their way into a close finish.
Notes
• The Canadian men last won an Olympic medal in basketball in 1936, when they took silver in Berlin. They have not made the semifinals at the Olympics since a fourth-place finish in Los Angeles in 1984.
• The semifinals take place on Thursday, with times still to be determined (likely based on who advances). The gold-medal game is scheduled for 3:30 p.m. ET / 12:30 p.m. on Saturday and the bronze for 5 a.m. ET / 2 a.m. PT that same day.
• South Sudan and Spain were classified ninth and 10th, with Japan and Puerto Rico coming in 11th and 12th without a victory. It says a lot about the globalization of the sport how competitive every pool and most games were. The 2027 World Cup in Qatar — a larger, deeper, and longer event — should be fascinating with so many more countries with reasonable hopes of making the 2028 Olympics. (The World Cup is a tremendous event and program goal on its own, to be clear.) Pre-qualifier events have already begun in some zones.
• Congratulations to the women’s 3×3 basketball team, which finished fourth on Monday after tight losses to Germany and the U.S. The game and tournament format are both very exciting and a nice complement to the more traditional 5×5 formats. Paige Crozon, Kacie Bosch, and Katherine and Michelle Plouffe deserve a world of respect for their performance, and for championing the 3×3 format in Canada the last few years.
• Michael Grange covered the big picture and need-to-knows for the women’s 5×5 team, who placed 11th in the event after classification. The future is still quite bright for the women’s program with so many talented players 24 and under, both on this team and at the youth levels. The WNBA arriving in Toronto soon can only help, too. And major congratulations are in order for Natalie Achonwa, who has spent the better part of two decades helping lay that foundation while also leading the senior women’s program to regular qualification for major international events (and the high-water mark of a fourth-place finish in the 2022 World Cup).
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