Canada's men's basketball team is back on the road to the Olympics

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The last time Canada appeared in an Olympic men's basketball event was in the year 2000. For perspective, the man who dragged Canada into the quarter-finals in Sydney, Steve Nash, was a 26-year-old point guard still five years away from winning his first of back-to-back NBA MVP awards. Today, he's a 48-year-old head coach fending off a coup attempt by Kevin Durant, who was 11 when the Sydney tournament tipped off.

The quickest and best way for the Canadian men's team to end its quarter-century absence from the Olympics in 2024 is via next summer's FIBA Basketball World Cup in Asia. The top two finishers from Canada's region, the Americas, get tickets to the Paris Olympics. One of those will almost certainly go to the United States, but the other is very much up for grabs. Argentina got it for last summer's Olympics in Tokyo despite having zero notable NBA players.

Canada has several of those on its current roster, including legit standouts in Jamal Murray, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort — all of whom have committed to the national team for this Olympic cycle. Andrew Wiggins has not, but there's hope that the key member of Golden State's 2022 championship team might hop on later. With a bunch of other solid NBA contributors on board — Kelly Olynyk, Nickeil Alexander-Walker, Dwight Powell and the Raptors' Khem Birch, to name some — and former NBA coach of the year Nick Nurse at the helm, Canada's chances of getting to Paris look pretty good.

But first, there's some business to attend to. In order to reach the World Cup, Canada must successfully