Canada clinches first trip to Olympics since 2000 with wild comeback win over Spain in FIBA World Cup

The global degree has no longer been type to Canadian basketball over the previous twenty years. In 2000, two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash led Canada on an implausible run to the Olympic quarterfinals prior to shedding a 68-63 heartbreaker to eventual silver medalist France. Ever since? It’s been a sequence of disappointments. Canada hadn’t even certified for the Olympics since that 2000 run. Until Sunday.

Canada ruled the first team degree of the 2023 FIBA World Cup, blowing out their first 3 fighters via 111 mixed issues. As the highest two finishers from the Americas on the World Cup earn Olympic bids, Canada was once in a place in which a unmarried victory virtually indubitably would have clinched a berth. From there, then again, they started to falter. They have been dissatisfied via Brazil in their first second-round sport, after which fell in the back of Spain via 12 to finish the 3rd quarter in their moment. It appeared as despite the fact that the Canadians have been headed for but any other crushing defeat. And then, most likely the 2 most famed avid gamers at the staff stepped up.

It all began on protection, as Canada held Spain to simply 12 fourth-quarter issues in the back of a monster efficiency out of Dillon Brooks. Brooks additionally hit various seize pictures in the fourth quarter, however the offense was once firmly in the arms of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, who no longer handiest outscored Spain in the fourth quarter on his personal, 13-12, but additionally controlled to ranking 11 issues in the overall 1:51 of the sport to thieve the victory and punch Canada’s price ticket to Paris in 2024.

“I told my dad I was gonna get there,” Canadian ahead RJ Barrett joked after the sport. Barrett’s father, Rowan Barrett, was once a member of that 2000 Olympic staff and these days serves as the chief vice chairman and common supervisor of the Canadian nationwide staff. Now, father and son will each be in a position to name themselves Olympians.

Of route, Canada’s paintings is not carried out in the Philippines. With a matchup towards Luka Doncic and Slovenia looming in the knockout degree, Canada can nonetheless win this event and be topped World Cup champions. Even if they do not moderately succeed in that function, Canada hasn’t ever medaled on the World Cup and hasn’t medaled at any global festival that incorporates groups out of doors of the Americas since incomes silver on the 1936 Olympics. This staff has a possibility to develop into probably the most completed in Canadian historical past even prior to taking the ground in Paris subsequent summer time. Thanks to Gilgeous-Alexander, Brooks, Barrett and probably the most gifted roster it has ever assembled, it’s in nice form to just do that.