(Manila, Philippines) It is certainly not the small final that the Canadian team which embarked on a three-year cycle in 2021 wanted to play this Sunday, but what it has achieved so far in the two recent weeks in Asia is colossal.
Serbia defeated Canada 95-86 in the semifinals of the FIBA Basketball World Cup on Friday in Manila, Philippines.
If they were to win against the Americans on Sunday, the maple leaf players would still bring back in their luggage the first medal from an Olympics or a World Championship in the country since 1936. That’s almost 100 years. of scarcity which would thereby be erased.
“We are a program under construction,” put Canadian head coach Jordi Fernandez into perspective after his team’s defeat.
“Our best years are ahead of us. To return home with a medal would be a gigantic achievement, none of us have ever been in this position,” he continued, referring to his squad’s inexperience in international matches.
“Winning a medal would mean that we fought for something, but, also, we can still do better. We want to leave this tournament hungry and elevate the program to the highest heights possible. »
The signs were there though. More than 25 players from the country play in the NBA. With just over 300 positions, that’s starting to make a good contingent. The equivalent of two teams out of the 30 in the big league. So much so that Canada is the second world producer of players playing in the largest circuit on the planet, distancing (and by a good margin) the French, Australian, Serbian, Croatian, German and Spanish programs from the world powers of this sport.
It will have taken almost 100 years, but Canada can now pride itself on making its entry among the powers of this sport invented in the past by one of our people in the country of Uncle Sam, and whose recipe has been well kept in south of our border for most of the 20th century.
Basketball has undergone a transformation since the Barcelona Games where the best American professional players were allowed to participate in international competitions. They were thereby able to reclaim “their” sport.
The famous “Dream Team” confirmed the domination of the Americans, but also sowed the dream of playing among the greatest among a multitude of young people all over the planet. So much so that the sport has become greatly internationalized since then. Of course, we still talk a lot about LeBron James, Kevin Durant and other great American stars, but you only have to look at the end-of-year trophy presentations to see that it is now international players who have dominated sport for several years.
The three most prestigious titles of the most recent NBA season were all awarded to international players: the Cameroonian Joel Embiid, most valuable player of the season, the Serbian Nikola Jokic, that of the final when he won the championship with the Canadian Jamal Murray at his side, and it was a Frenchman, Victor Wembanyama, who was selected first in the most anticipated draft since that of LeBron James in 2003.
We are now looking for talent everywhere and Canada is at the heart of this recent phenomenon. In fact, the North American best suited to confront the NBA’s international “invasion” is not from the United States, but from Canada, and his name is Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.
If you don’t know this name yet, you will undoubtedly hear it a lot in the coming years. He has improved every year since arriving in the big leagues in 2019 and is now considered the best at his position in a league where stars are multiplying.
It is largely thanks to him that Canada is so successful in this current World Cup. He only scored 15 points in the semifinals, but that was an average of 10 more per game since the start of the tournament.
In the past year, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and his gang have defeated nations that have already proven themselves to be the titans of the sport: Argentina in qualifying, Germany in preseason, France in tournament debut. The Canadians then ended the tournament with the Spaniards, ranked number one on the world board, and beat the Slovenians with their leader Luka Dončić.
Each of these victories became one of the most important, if not the most important, in the history of the national program. The one against the Spaniards will also have confirmed the country’s presence at the Paris Olympic Games in 2024. A first in 24 years.
The Canadians were aiming for an Olympic qualification and a medal in Manila. Even ten years ago, we would have believed in a collective delirium. Half of this ambitious goal completed, the other is still a possibility.
