Will the lack of a true center be an issue for the Senior Men this summer?

The roster invitees are in camp now for the Senior Men's National Team and most people are touting this group of incredibly talented players.  The only glaring omission from the roster is that there are no true centers in camp.  Can Ball Ray talks about why this may be something that can come back to haunt the team on their road to qualifying for the 2014 FIBA World Cup of Basketball this summer ...

It’s been about ten days since Canada Basketball hadannounced the Senior Men’s National Team camp invitees and the anticipation isbuilding.  This set of players represents probably the best group of talent at the senior level in an incredibly long time and we are all eager to see what they can do in coming weeks.  But despite all the talented players that are in camp there is not one true center on the roster. 

Can the Senior Men qualify for the FIBA World Cup if they don’t have a true five?

When me and my colleague Duane Watson, of TSN Radio’s 1-on-1 by the way, were walking from the SMNT camp session this past Saturday we got into a discussion about the roster and this topic came up.  We both hashed out ideas and thoughts over a 20-minute period but we didn’t fully resolve the question and got me asking myself again, could the team succeed without a true center? 

The lack of a bonifide five on the roster has not been something new to the SMNT.  There hasn’t really been a legit player to fill that role since the early 2000s when a guy named Todd MacCulloch manned the middle.  Since then, the team has struggled to find someone capable to fill the role, particularly someone who is a two-way player. 

This is not to say that Canada does not have players that can be called upon to try and fill that role.  In fact there are a few big bodies that can.  The names Samuel Dalembert, Robert Sacre immediately comes to mind along with current NCAA players Jordan Bachynski and Sim Bhullar.  All four, among others, could have been in camp to fill that role but for one reason or another they are not.  That leaves the team to play a type of “center by committee” using guys who are more of the power forward mold than center. 

I think this could be an issue when the SMNT play a team with some size, particularly if they have more than one legit 7-footer with an NBA ready body. 

The root of why I think this will be an issue is the way that the international tournaments are set up.  People seem to forget that in international competition, there usually isn’t a period of days between games but the exact opposite.  In tournaments, the games are usually played on back-to-back-to-back days and regardless of how well you keep your body, players will fatigue.  This will become a factor especially when guys are playing incredibly physical basketball with dudes that are physically bigger than then they are night in, night out.  With the players going at it daily, this can only be expected and will be an evitable situation to work through. 

Looking at the SMNT currently has four forwards that could be considered PFs and one that could swing between PF and C.  Now the cuts haven’t been made just yet but it would be safe to assume that not all of these five players will be heading off to Caracas at the end of the month so there will be at least one player not getting a uniform and plane ticket.  This will only further reduce the amount of available bigs for the games and tournaments over the next few weeks, which will in turn compound the situation. 

Canada has been exposed in the past by teams who had very good size up front.  The basketball powers have seemed to locate multiple bruising Marc Gasol, Hamad Haddadi or Nene types who are able to pound the ball into the middle, eat space, grab rebounds and defend the rim.  Defending someone that is taller, bigger and likely heavier than you over the course of a game is tough, especially when there are two or three of them coming at you in waves. 

To be fair to this edition of SMNT frontcourt hopefuls, they are coming in with a lot more overall athleticism than previous editions and that is not to be discounted in this discussion.  That will be help to negate a size or strength advantage that other teams may have but this will be affected by fatigue over the course of a tournament. 

Over the long SMNT summer, I think that this lack of true center size will be something to take note of.  I don’t have any doubt that our frontcourt vets are savvy enough and the young guys athletic enough to work through this likely size disadvantage.  My last question would be how long could they do so before they get to the finish line?