Until our players truly want to play for Canada, the basketball program will continue to suffer.
Ask not what you can do for your country, but what your country can do for you.
Run that line of reasoning over and over through your head as you try to make sense of the decline -- or at least the continued flatlining -- of the fortunes of the Canadian men's national basketball team and you might just be able to figure it out.
The facts alone are grim, and for those who care about basketball in this country -- frustrating and familiar.
On Thursday, facing 28th-ranked Panama in a game they had to win to have any chance of advancing in their bid to qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics, Canada (ranked 23rd coming into the FIBA Americas championships) lost 91-89 and instead will have to wait until the summer of 2013 to play a meaningful international game again.
The loss means the soonest Canada can return to the Olympic stage will be 2016, which would mark the 40th anniversary of Canada's fourth-place finish at the Montreal Olympics -- its best ever result and quite possibly the best forever, at this rate.
If there is hope it's in the seemingly rich pipeline of talent behind the current group of national team players. It lends some credibility for Canada Basketball chief executive officer Wayne Parrish's brave claim that "I don't think (the failure to advance towards the 2012 Olympics) changes a lot in terms of the trajectory or development of the program."
Here's hoping that turns out to be true.
In the meantime the first casualty is head coach Leo Rautins, who waved the white flag and announced his resignation Thursday. It was a classy gesture by a coach who has been an easy target since he took over the program in 2005 and failed to qualify for the 2006 World Championships thanks -- in part -- to another loss to lowly Panama.
The real casualty is the sport itself. It is played widely across the country -- more widely than hockey by some measures -- and as the nation diversifies, it's more closely held than ever before by more people.
But the struggles of the team internationally rob it one more time of a rallying point and an opportunity to position itself for greater corporate support and government funding in an environment where hockey's shadow is long and dark and sunlight for everything else is scarce.
There will be an effort to cast blame, but the problem for the organization and the national team is one of relevance.
Right now it's too easy for some of our best players not to play basketball for their country.
If Steve Nash were deeply interested in maintaining his hard-earned image as a basketball patriot, he probably should've played this summer. His comments from Vancouver in the Globe and Mail Wednesday -- that he might have played if he knew the NBA lockout was going to delay the start of the season -- come off as a weak excuse.
The fact is Nash played for Canada when it served his interests -- to advance his status as an aspiring professional player. Once playing virtually year-round became detrimental to those interests or interests outside the sport -- film, business, charity work, family -- he's stayed away.
Playing for Canada never seemed like a good idea for Jamaal Magloire, so he never has, at least since his NBA career began.
An exception might be Matt Bonner, the New Hampshire-born Canadian-at-heart who simply seemed pumped at the possibility of playing for his wife's home country, only to have his attempts to be rushed through the immigration process fall short.
Those who played this summer and in summers past deserve credit and praise, but they've certainly stood to gain personally from the experience. Joel Anthony used the increased confidence he earned playing a primary role for Canada to earn a three-year, $11.1-million contract with the Miami Heat. Andy Rautins gets to play for his father and gets to play, period -- a rarity this past season as a rookie with the New York Knicks.
Playing for Canada in the summer has translated into professional contracts for others outside the NBA orbit and at the very least the $18,000 in carding money -- tax free -- that national team members get is not bad coin for six-to-eight weeks work for guys on the fringes of the professional game.
And before the selflessness of hockey players gets trotted out it's probably worth remembering that playing for Canada is baked into the fabric of the NHL talent evaluation process. National team invites are a path to the draft at the younger levels and proof of star status for players already in the league.
Playing hockey for Canada also carries an added benefit playing basketball (or soccer, for that matter) does not: the chance to be part of history, to be a legend, to be the very best in the world.
Playing basketball for Canada doesn't offer that prospect -- for the most part it offers frustration and disappointment -- so more tangible cost-benefits come into play.
A talent like Tristan Thompson has to decide if he's better served by methodically building a serviceable NBA jumper while catching up on his studies at the University of Texas or offering himself as a guided missile on the boards without the cushion of his first NBA contract?
Thompson -- who says he's open to playing for Canada in the future and has at the junior level -- chose the former this time. His college teammate, Cory Joseph, took the opportunity to play this summer and advance his point guard skills playing against men in preparation for what will be a challenging battle for playing time with the San Antonio Spurs.
Presumably each will be served by their choices.
But that's just it. Until Canada can get to the stage where playing basketball for the country is a compelling opportunity in itself, the story won't change. Playing basketball for Canada will remain an exercise in what the country can do for the individual, and not the other way around.
