Canadian SMNT’s push for 2024 Olympic basketball berth starts with commitment from talented core

TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – The ink had barely dried on the box score following the latest in a long line of disappointing defeats for the Canadian senior men’s basketball team as Nick Nurse sat in his office and began to diagnose the root of the problem.

Talent was not an issue. The roster included eight of the 13 NBA players that participated in last summer’s six-team qualifying tournament in Victoria, B.C. The program and its sponsors had invested considerable resources to host the event on home soil, so it wasn’t for a lack of opportunity either.

The team from Czech Republic that upset them in the semi-finals featured just one NBA player, veteran guard Tomas Satoransky. However, just like the Venezuelan club that knocked Canada out of the 2015 FIBA Americas tournament in similar fashion, they had the benefit of experience and chemistry.

Those who fail to learn from the past are destined to repeat it. For Nurse to lead Canada back to the Olympics, he knew it would require a significant shift in approach.

“We saw and learned a lot from Victoria,” said Nurse, the NBA champion head coach of the Toronto Raptors, who has also been at the helm of the Canadian national team since 2019. “The team that beat us had been together. I think they returned nine players from their fourth or fifth-place finish at the [2019 FIBA] World Cup, and I think we returned one. So, I think our guys understood we lost to a team that had been together for many years, probably more than anything else. I think we learned from that and I think our guys felt that.”

On Tuesday, Canada Basketball revealed a diverse and talented 14-man core roster for this summer’s qualifiers, as well as upcoming summers leading to the Paris 2024