On a day filled with promise, Canada falls short on world stage

Milos Raonic talks about his great run at the 2016 Wimbledon and what to expect going forward.

Being Canadian, it should go without saying, is amazing. Beautiful country. Beautiful people. So much good fortune. Such good values.

It’s not perfect. Nowhere is. But few countries have as much that so many of its citizens can be proud of.

Being a Canadian sports fan can be a test sometimes, which is why so many love hockey and curling unreservedly. So many more happy endings.

But venture outside those ice-covered avenues and things get slippery pretty fast.

Sunday, July 10 was set up for one of those days when anything seemed possible. You had a hardscrabble Canadian men’s basketball team, trying desperately to gain a foothold in the big leagues of international competition, playing France in Manila one year after losing a chance to qualify for Rio in Mexico City due to a haunting upset at the hands of Venezuela.

Talk about a global sport.

A Canadian men’s basketball team hasn’t been to the Olympics since 2000, and only once since 1988. For a generation of Canadian players who individually made their name in the NBA and around the world, this was a chance to do it with Canada on their chests and start what could potentially be a 10- or 12-year run as one of the top basketball countries in the world. No small feat given the breadth of the game around the world.

And outside of London, at Wimbledon, you had Milos Raonic, a son of immigrants from Montenegro trying to become the first Canadian to win on those hallowed grounds; the first Canadian to win a major singles title. Being the best in an individual sport, even for a few weeks, was a path walked by Mike Weir in golf at the Masters in 2003 and left largely empty since, proof at how difficult competing globally really is.

As happens more often than not in these moments, Canada — or at least the individuals sports fans here aligned themselves with for the day — fell short. Nothing to be embarrassed about, it’s a big world out there. But it’s still tough to take sometimes, especially when Canada gets so close.

Basketball tipped off first. And it was a hell of a game. Canada was the underdog mainly on the basis of relative experience. France ended up winning 84-73 in a game that was closer than the final score suggested, but of which Canada was never in control.

The core of the French national team has been world-class for years, finishing sixth at the Olympics in London, first at EuroBasket in 2013 and third in the world championships in 2014. Moreover, France was the favourite because they could draw the likes of Boris Diaw, 33, and Tony Parker, 34, to Manila to play for them. Nic Batum signed a $120-million contract with the Charlotte Hornets on July 7 and was in France’s lineup on July 9 for the semifinals against Turkey.

In trying to right what went wrong against Venezuela last September when Canada melted down after leading by seven with three minutes to play, the men’s team was led by it’s stalwarts. Cory Joseph has almost never said “no” to playing for Canada. He was the team’s MVP through four games in Manila. Tristan Thompson arrived only a few weeks after playing in Game 7 of the NBA Finals. Say what you want, but there’s no handbook that suggests playing peak competitive international basketball that close to the end of a 10-month professional season is anything close to ideal.

And there were other great stories too: Levon Kendall resuming his international career after pausing it while his baby boy battled brain cancer; Tyler Ennis, injured through most of his two NBA seasons, showing flashes of why he was a first-round pick two years ago; or international pro Melvin Ejim proving that he deserves an NBA shot in his own right.

But this edition of Canada will be remembered, unfairly perhaps, for who wasn’t there. A number of Canadian NBA players chose not play because they weren’t under contract, which is hard to argue with. Kelly Olynyk of the Boston Celtics is recovering from shoulder surgery.

The two names missing that are harder to explain are Andrew Wiggins and Nik Stauskas, both healthy, both under contract, both chosing to sit this summer out to focus on getting ready for their third NBA seasons.

It’s hard to criticize people for failing to participate in what is essentially a volunteer mission that comes with considerable risk to your health and long-term earning potential. And who knows, maybe if Canada makes it to the 2019 world championships or the 2020 Olympics, Stauskas and Wiggins will be front and centre, their NBA careers well-established leaving them free to focus on the national team for a few months.

But it wasn’t hard to read between the lines when Joseph, who led Canada in scoring in all four games in Manila and delivered 20 points in a blood-on-jersey type performance Sunday, made clear why he makes playing for Canada a priority.

"I keep Canada close to my heart, so whenever I get a chance I’m honoured to play for them, and I try to go out there and leave it all on the court," he said. "Playing for Canada, we have a great coaching staff, so I’m still working on my game, still getting better, and there’s no better competition you’ll get in the world in the summertime than playing."

Or when Nash was asked if reaching the Olympics — something the two-time MVP has always maintained was the highlight of his career — was as meaningful to a younger generation of players.

"I’m not sure, overall, if the Olympics resonate with the younger generation like it did, especially in certain sports," said Nash. "The world is changing all the time that it’s just one of those things. Kids have so many more options now to use and outlets. It doesn’t quite have the same resonance that it did before."

The message: this may be a (potentially) golden generation of Canadian basketball talent, but there is no way that they’ll reach their goals or gold without making a collective sacrifice for the honour of doing something for the country that’s never been done before.

The rewards aren’t in dollars, but there is a value in being forever remembered and recognized with a certain reverence.

There are worse things than walking into (metaphorical) battle far from home with your brothers, a nation at home willing you to your best. In fact, there may be nothing better. It’s hard to imagine having Wiggins and Stauskas on the roster wouldn’t have tipped the balance for Canada this summer, but we’ll never know.

The Canadians who did play in Manila, and those that didn’t, needn’t look further than the emotion on the faces of the likes of Parker, a four-time NBA champion ecstatic at making it to the Olympics one more time, digging deep to give France 26 points, many of them Canadian back-breakers.

About the time all of that was happening Raonic’s dream of planting a Canadian flag on the lawns of Wimbledon were fading. For two weeks he’d proved the best version of himself. No longer a one-dimensional player with a first serve like a nuclear device, the rest of his game wet gunpowder, Raonic had shown that at age 25 he’d grown into his considerable talent after a meticulous self-improvement plan that addressed diet, sleep, fitness, health and technique. Raonic employs more people to help him with all of that than a medium-sized business and for the summer had retained American tennis legend John McEnroe as his version of a life coach.

But with the finish line in sight and against a home crowd favourite, Scotsman Andy Murray — pretty clearly the second-best player in the world right now behind Novak Djokovic — made Raonic look solvable in a 6-4, 7-6, 7-6 straight sets win.

Raonic only had his serve broken once, but against the best in the game it’s what you can do defensively that might matter more. Raonic failed to break Murray, dismantling the service games of the sport’s top players something that’s plagued him in the biggest moment of his career so far.

But Raonic is remains resolute: "This one’s gonna sting so I’m going to make sure, as these courts are green, that I’m going to be back here," he said. "I keep plugging away. Every single day I try to get better, to give myself these chances, because I want to be back here."

When it comes to Canadian basketball the dream is of even getting there in the first place.

In either case on this summer Sunday, the results hurt.

Two sports, contested miles apart and many miles from home, but for Canadians taking on the best in the world the end was the same: it wasn’t Canada’s Day.

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