1. Whew. That was so close. Too close. Closer than the final score, 78-72, would even suggest.
New Zealand is a better team than their pedigree or reputation might argue, even without Steven Adams of the Oklahoma City Thunder on their roster — see Canada is not the only country without all the players! The Tall Blacks played a poised game, seemed to have a much more fluid half-court approach which was helped mightily because they had a couple of bigs who could comfortably stretch out to the three-point line and spread Canada’s defence.
Thomas Abercrombie hit three triples and centre Robert Loe hit a pair as New Zealand was 9-of-25 overall from deep, compared to Canada’s 4-of-20. Having them on the floor gave Canadian head coach Jay Triano some tough choices with his rotation, especially as New Zealand went with a lot of smaller lineups.
Tristan Thompson needs to play big minutes and he showed why as he had some of his NBA Finals beast mode going on, finishing with 13 points and 10 rebounds, including five offensive rebounds. His catch of a Cory Joseph pass to the rim (I think it was a pass) and knocking down of the subsequent free throws with 3:19 was a huge moment that broke a 71-71 tie. Khem Birch, the long, active big from Montreal, gave Canada a lot of good minutes and was tough to take off the floor, and Melvin Ejim — more on him below — is simply too valuable to sit.
The odd man out in that math is Anthony Bennett, who gave Canada nine points and nine rebounds in 20 minutes, but his lack of defensive awareness was glaring at times in the second half as he routinely failed to read help situations and left the paint exposed as Canada struggled to contain New Zealand’s pick-and-roll game. It’s a flaw in his game that makes it hard to keep him on the floor in key moments. It will be interesting to watch in the final.
2. The player of the game for Canada was Cory Joseph, there’s not much arguing that point. He played 31 minutes and scored 23 points and seemed to score many of them when Canada needed them most. It wasn’t the tightest performance as his five turnovers would suggest, but Canada needed someone to assert themselves and Joseph was more than willing. Joseph’s confidence in this role is growing big moment by big moment.
But the “other” player of the game was Ejim, who is emerging as a Canadian basketball cult hero, the hoops equivalent of an underground mixed tape that only those in the know seem to appreciate while larger commercial interests seem oblivious. Ejim’s sins are that he’s a tweener, by NBA standards. At six-foot-seven, he doesn’t have quite the skill set that threes typically have and he’s a little small for a four. He’s just an adequate three-point shooter at the moment (33 per cent on 2.7 attempts a game for the Erie Bayhawks in the D-League last season), which might be another strike.
But the more you watch Ejim play, the more you come to appreciate his abundant basketball IQ and the intelligent hustle (running to set screens at full speed, yet with good timing; constantly getting his hands on loose balls, or coming up with them in a crowd; sprinting to the right spot in transition to open lanes for others) that he plays with on every possession. His offensive rebound and put-back of a Joseph miss was the most important play of the game. It gave Canada a 76-71 lead with 21 seconds left, but was just one of several huge plays he made on his way to a line of 13 points, seven rebounds and two blocks.
One of those blocks was simply stunning — a LeBron James-worthy chase down from out of nowhere after a sloppy Joseph turnover in the half-court in the third quarter.
Ejim never quits on a play, but there were all kinds of little plays that he makes routinely that speak to his quality. My favourite was winning a defensive rebound by tapping it to himself, shovelling the ball ahead to Joseph and then sprinting past the ball, and everyone on the floor, to get in position to finish the fast break he’d created. He missed the lay-up but the cleverness, hustle and awareness are second-to-none.
It seems that intelligence and competitiveness are the two qualities that NBA talent evaluators consistently underestimate when looking for players. It’s hard to imagine Ejim failing if he ever got an NBA shot. I picture him getting spot minutes and earning a few more, then shining few times in garbage time by playing hard and selflessly when most players are simply trying to jack shots. Then an injury would come along and he’d get 10 or 12 minutes in a few games and next thing you know he’d be in some team’s small-ball rotation. Canada is lucky to have him.
For more on Ejim, I recommend Blake Murphy’s profile of him in Raptors Republic from a few months back.
3. OK, what now? Playing against fifth-ranked France, Canada will have to put together the best qualities of the three games they’ve played so far.
Defensively they’ve been very good. Apart from an uncharacteristic 25-point first quarter against New Zealand they’ve been really solid, but as they showed at times on Saturday, they are vulnerable to even the slightest misdirection in the half-court and you have to figure against France there is going to be a lot of it. There is plenty of blame to go around, but Ennis, Heslip and Bennett all looked lost at times, defensively. In general, it looked like there was too much hugging going on the weak side of the defence, not all that surprising when a team doesn’t have a lot of miles on it as a unit. No one wants to be the one who makes a mistake in coverage so they tend to stick to their man rather than risk being in the wrong place on a defensive rotation.
It will be interesting to watch how quick Triano’s hook is in the final and how tightly he manages minutes. Keeping with that theme, Canada is going to need someone to open up the floor, offensively. Joseph and Ennis have proven they can get to the paint and the rim easily, but Canada has looked sluggish offensively because when they kick out and the ball swings, there aren’t enough threats to take advantage of potential good looks from behind the arc. This is the reason Heslip is on the national team, and needs to be a big part of Phil Scrubb’s game too, but combined they are 1-of-14 over their past two games. Canada is shooting just 23 per cent from three for the tournament. That will have to change if Canada is going to make it to the Olympics.
It hasn’t been pretty through three games but Canada deserves a lot of credit for going 3-0 and making it to the final. They just need to put it together for one game.