My Two Cents: The Senior Men, Caracas and Indifference

The Senior Men's National Team looked poised to make a run at a top four finish in Venezuela at the FIBA Americas Championship early on but were unable to maintain momentum, or composure down the stretch of games.  What resulted was a disappointing finish and another summer outside of a major global basketball competition in 2014.  When most Canadian basketball fans are ranting, lamenting or cursing the basketball gods, Can Ball Ray has a rather relaxed view of the results.  Check out what he's thinking here in My Two Cents ...

By now you’ve all probably let it sink in that Canada will not be going to Spain next summer for the FIBA World Cup of Basketball.  I bet you have the same feeling that I had when you watched the seconds tick away before the buzzer too. 

Or maybe not. 

I’m not quite sure how you felt about the outcome of the Senior Men’s result at the FIBA Americas Championship but I know how I felt and it wasn’t too good or too bad.  What I felt was something else.   What I felt was a little sense of indifference. 

Let me explain that to you here.

Right after the loss to Argentina this past Sunday, the Twitter world blew up with comments on the team, the way they played, the decision making on plays, the reffing and just about everything else that could have cost Canada a spot in the top four of this tournament.  I’m not innocent here, of course.  I had my critiques on aspects of the games that were losses in second round.  How could I not comment looking from the outside in as an observer?   But the level of blasting that I read on what is the stream of conscious thought and speak of the social media world that is Twitter was making my head spin.  Everything from the team was terrible to get a new coach was seen. 

All I could think was “Wow, how easy the world can turn.”  And I didn't get it at all.  

This tournament was supposed to be the test run for the new look Senior Men’s program.  The one with the newly infused core of young talent that we as basketball fans in this country have been waiting to see for about three years at the international level.  What we largely had were a group of early twenty-something players who were just beginning their professional careers mixed in with a few veteran players who had been through these tournaments before.  The team had only really played together in a competitive environment for one month after spending the rest of the year away plying their trade at their jobs in other countries. 

Did we all really expect that playing a core of five very young players 30-plus minutes a game in an international setting was going to get the job done night in, night out? 

Bad question I suppose.  Playing in the weaker of the two pools in Caracas may have given us that impression and the manner of the wins that Canada did get possibly further bloated the expectations as well both for better and worse. 

This edition of the Senior Men’s National Team was definitely a very talented team.  It was probably the most talented team that has been assembled in a long time.  But the talent in very young at this point at it’s core.  These guys that will likely be in the Program for at least the coming Olympic cycle will need the time to play, grow and fail to ultimately succeed together. 

This was FIBA Americas was all of that.  

We saw that there was talent to be competitive and whenever possible run over opponents.  We saw the emergence of Cory Joseph, Tristan Thompson and Andrew Nicholson as burgeoning stars at the international level.  We saw the team knock down the outside shots at ridiculous rates.  We saw toughness and attitude that the team will rely on as the summers come.  Conversely, we also saw the youth that took ill-advised shots.  We saw the newness to the international game and the lack of composure in moments.  We saw the lack of the will to execute down the stretch that is brought by experience.  

This tournament could have easily been something that Canada Basketball could have pointed at to say that the Program is on an upswing and that it’s actually ahead of the curve.  And had the SMNT qualified for Spain with a top four finish the Program would have been ahead indeed.   Alas, we are relegated to looking in from the outside once again. 

But this time around it is different, very different.  We know, or should know, that this was just among the first, second and third steps to completion of the greater plan that didn’t end this past Sunday.  There are more days to come, more tournaments, more wins and more milestones.  This isn’t 2010.  There will be no rebuild from scratch. 

So when you ask me about how I felt about how Canada’s Senior Men closed out the FIBA Americas Championship and how they didn’t qualify for Spain you’ll understand when I say indifferent.  We all needed to learn to crawl before we walked before we run.  The Program is crawling now and at the rate we have talent coming through the pipe, it’ll be running in no time.