A year after one the most wrenching losses in Canadian basketball history, the men’s national team returned to Blanshard Street for a statement 99-87 victory over world No. 7 Argentina in a 2023 FIBA World Cup qualifying game at Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre.
“It’s huge. It’s only our second win ever over Argentina. It doesn’t happen too often,” said forward Kelly Olynyk of Kamloops.
“We gotta get more [qualifying] games out here. They are all on the East Coast.”
Canada was cheered on by a near-capacity crowd of 7,000 fans Thursday night, including Canada and Raptors Super Fan Nav Bhatia. One of the young spectators held up a sign reading “Shai 4 Prime Minister.” NBA player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder responded with a fine performance of 23 points and eight assists.
“Shai is huge for us,” said Olynyk. “He does so much and creates so much offence and is also good on defence.”
Olynyk, of the NBA’s Detroit Pistons, returned to his home province with 21 points and eight rebounds. Among the other NBA players for Canada, the ever-steady Dwight Powell of the Dallas Mavericks scored 12 points and pulled down seven rebounds, mercurial Nickeil Alexander-Walker of the Utah Jazz had eight points and Cory Joseph of the Pistons provided veteran stability in the backcourt with eight points.
“We got off to a good start and that helped us out,” said Olynyk. “We pushed the lead to 20 points and that gave us a cushion.”
Canada led 28-21 at the end of the first quarter and built that to 52-39 at the half and 83-68 at three-quarters in what was the first game of the second round of qualifying. It was the first game back in the Memorial Centre for Canada since last year’s crushing loss to the Czech Republic in the Olympic qualifying tournament that denied Canada a trip to Tokyo.
Canada is the only undefeated team in the Americas, now 7-0 in 2023 World Cup qualifying. Canada is in Group E for the second round with Argentina (5-2). Records from all rounds carry over in FIBA. Heading into games Thursday night, Venezuela was 5-1, Dominican Republic 4-2, Panama 2-4 and Bahamas 2-4.
Canada now heads to Central America, where it will meet Panama on Monday to close this window.
The Group F is also made up of six Americas teams. The top three in each group, and the top fourth-place finisher, will advance to the FIBA World Cup from Aug. 25 to Sept. 10, 2023, in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia. The World Cup is important because the top-seven teams from that tournament next year will qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics.
“Our goal first and foremost is to get into the World Cup. You’ve got to get there,” said Canada head coach Nick Nurse, also NBA head coach of the Toronto Raptors, before the game.
Canada is attempting to end a drought. It hasn’t been to the Olympics in men’s basketball since captained by two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash of Victoria at Sydney in 2000. While Canada’s Golden Generation of NBA players has so far underachieved, in that span, Argentina beat the U.S. to win the gold medal in the 2004 Athens Olympics, captured the bronze medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, made the bronze-medal game at the London 2012 Olympics and the quarter-finals at Rio 2016 and Tokyo last summer. Argentina also won the silver medal at the last FIBA World Cup in 2019 at China.
