In international basketball circles, the Pan Am Games are a bit of an orphan.
They lack the glamour of the Olympics or the simplicity of the World Championships, and within Canada’s hemisphere, they lack the weight that the FIBA Americas Championship carries as the port of entry for each of those global events.
But Canada is not in a position to be choosy about where it finds its international success. For all the excitement about the future of our men’s program internationally, it’s important to remember where they are coming from – the hole is deep.
Its convincing 96-76 win over Mexico on Thursday night improve them to 3-0 in Pool B and advanced them to the semifinal on Friday against the U.S., who lost 93-83 to Brazil to finish second in their pool. The Brazilians will play the Dominican Republic in the other semi.
Watch Canada vs. USA in the men’s basketball semifinal at the Pan Am Games game on Friday at 6:00 p.m. ET on Sportsnet.
One more win and Canada gets itself a medal. Two more and it claims gold.
The significance?
Canada has never won a medal of any colour in men’s basketball at the Pan Am Games, which have been around since 1951. Canada doesn’t have its full compliment of NBA players here, but it does have 12 players who are determined to be included in the mix for the Olympic qualifying tournament in Mexico City in September, so how they perform in Toronto matters.
“With the short preparation, you’re not sure how your team is going to adapt and come together, but we do look like we’re coming together,” said Canada Basketball executive vice-president and assistant general manager Rowan Barrett. “And we’ve never won a medal before, so we have a chance to make some history.”
And perhaps just as important, begin erasing a history that basketball fans in Canada would rather forget. After all, it’s not like Canada has never been a factor in international basketball.
From 1976 until 1988 Canada’s average result at three world championships and three Olympics was fifth. It finished fourth in the 1976 Olympics in Montreal and sixth in the 1988 Games in Seoul.
There was a drop-off after that – Canada missed qualifying for the 1992 Olympics – but it placed seventh at the World Championships in Toronto in 1994, struggled some more and then finished a hard-luck seventh at the Olympics in 2000 when Steve Nash looked like he was going to get Canada a medal by himself.
But the bottom dropped out after that. Canada missed qualifying for the 2004, 2008 and 2012 Olympics. It finished 13th at the 2002 World Championships, didn’t qualify for them in 2006; finished 22nd in 2010 and missed qualifying for the World again in 2014. During the same stretch their standing in FIBA Americas slipped precipitously too.
There is no certainty that slide will be stopped when Canada tries to qualify for Rio at the end of the summer – only the top-two teams make it — but a good result here at the Pan Am Games represents a leaping off point; a chance for this new generation of players to get a taste of success.
It won’t come easily. Brazil is considered the team in the tournament with the highest proportion of the players it will compete with in Mexico City, and while the United States team is a far cry from their LeBron James/Kevin Durant crowd, it’s mix of quality college players, NBA veterans and established European professionals. Not an easy out.
“There are a lot of quality teams here,” said Canada’s Melvin Ejim, a decorated NCAA player who played professionally in Italy last year and recently played in the NBA summer league in Orlando. “A lot of teams are going to have some of these players in the qualifier. It’s important for us to build this foundation and grow from it. A gold would definitely do this for us.”
Doing it at home is a bonus. Nine of the 12 players on the roster are from the Toronto and ten are from Ontario. They just rarely get to play here.
“Me, personally, I haven’t really played a lot in Canada,” said Ejim. “I played a lot of my basketball in the United States. A lot of people might not know who I am, or vaguely know who I am. It’s great to showcase, show them who I am, to play in front of my family, my friends, to play in front of our nation. The girl’s game [where the Canadian women’s team won gold against the US] was electrifying. We’re hoping we’re going to get that same atmosphere when we play.”
The tournament has been fascinating also because it’s offered the opportunity to see the kind of difficult choices national team head coach Jay Triano will have to make later this summer as he picks his best 12 for Mexico.
While Anthony Bennett and Andrew Nicholson look like they will justifiably parlay their NBA pedigree into significant roles, rounding out the rest of the roster won’t be as easy. Some toes will get stepped on.
Ejim is emerging as a must-have glue guy who can play both forward positions; does he push out a 10-year national team veteran like Aaron Doornekamp?
Will electrifying 18-year-old Jamal Murray (14 points and five rebounds on 6-of-9 shooting) and slick shooting Brady Heslip (20 points on 13 shots last night) take over from the likes of Junior Cadougan and Carl English?
What does giant Sim Bhullar offer, or perpetual motion machine Daniel Mullings?
“Win or lose getting to this point has been great for our young players,” said Triano. “To get to play in their own country and to get the experience they have against veteran international players. I mean look at these teams. They are not young like us. They are guys who have been around the block and [our young guys] need to learn the international game and there’s not better way to do it than against these teams.”
They’ve got Canada on the cusp of Pan Am Games medal and have helped the men’s basketball program emerge from a long period of darkness. Canada needs that and in that sense, success at the Pan Ams should be embraced warmly.
The question now is starting from here, how far can Canada go and who is going to take them there?