From promise to pain, Canadian men's basketball team endures all-too-familiar fate in Paris

This Canadian men's basketball team was supposed to be different.

Instead, the same old story unfurled in Tuesday's 82-73 quarterfinal loss to France at the Paris Olympics.

You could compare it to 2016 and 2021 Olympic qualifiers, when Canada lost heart-breaking games to Venezuela and the Czech Republic — contests they entered as favourites, but lost due to some combination of a lack of experience and surprise contributors on the other side.

Those Olympics marked the last time the men's team reached the Games. The goal now is to ensure it is not another 24 years before it happens again.

Former Canada Basketball president Glen Grunwald, speaking with CBC Sports minutes after the final buzzer, sounded gutted.

Grunwald, who still works with the organization as an advisor, said it was "a tough loss."

"International basketball is hard. We got dealt a tough hand today, playing in front of the raucous home crowd in France and we obviously got a very bad whistle. And we just didn't make shots. We didn't play quite as well as we needed to," he said.

"Obviously the basketball Gods were not smiling upon Team Canada here today."

WATCH | France knocks Canada out of Olympics:

The fans in Bercy Arena did appear to be deafening — so much so that Canadian players seemed to have trouble hearing each other and communicating on both ends.

By the time France took a 19-5 lead just over seven minutes into the first quarter, there was no reeling the crowd back in.

Canada fought to get back in the game, but never came within one possession of tying France.

And, just like that, a promising Olympic tournament went up in flames.

The Hamilton, Ont., native said he was still trying to dissect what went wrong after the game.

"I have no clue. We