Having Shai Gilgeous-Alexander on your team is a cheat code.
It was telling during the Canadian men’s basketball team’s harder-than-it-looked 86-79 win Saturday over Greece in their long-awaited opening game of the 2024 Olympic tournament that down the stretch, when every possession mattered and when it looked like Greece might come back and steal what looked like a certain win right under Canada’s noses, that the best player on the floor was the Oklahoma City Thunder star, not Giannis Antetokounmpo, the two-time NBA MVP and 2021 NBA champion and Finals MVP.
Not that Antetokounmpo wasn’t great or anything. The Milwaukee Bucks star, who somehow combines the power of a freight train with the agility of a panther, was fantastic in Greece’s first Olympics appearance in 16 years as he led all scorers with 34 points on 11-of-17 shooting while muscling his way to the free throw line where he converted 12-of-16 chances.
Canada threw everything it had at him, but it didn’t matter. Giannis was Giannising.
Along the way, he fouled out Canada’s best two perimeter defenders, Dillon Brooks and Lu Dort, and sent Dwight Powell — Canada’s best defensive option centre — to the bench early with five fouls as well.
Still, Canada controlled the game, for the most part, other than a scary couple of stretches in the fourth quarter, which is when Gilgeous-Alexander guided Canada home.
First Greece cut a Canadian lead that had been as large as 16 points early in the third quarter and hovered around double digits for most of the game down to four early in the fourth, but Canada — with Gilgeous-Alexander’s help — quelled the threat.
And then — and this is well things got a bit scary — Greece cut a 12-point Canadian lead with 3:24 to play all the way down to two with 1:04 remaining, the worst moment coming when Canadian big man Trey Lyles got stripped at centre while bringing the ball up against Greece’s press leading to dunk in transition for Antetokounmpo.
But in each scenario, it was Gilgeous-Alexander who took the reins, made plays and kept things calm, and in each scenario, he did with signature plays that are 10/10 — or more, if that’s possible — in terms of difficulty, but which the smooth, six-foot-six guard makes seemingly easily and routinely.
Early in the fourth, with Greece within four, Gilgeous-Alexander got his feet in the paint, drawing the defence and whipped a pass to a wide-open Dort who nailed the in-rhythm three. Then Gilgeous-Alexander hit a difficult step-back three that had the defence reeling, but he never seemed for a moment off balance. Finally, he drew a foul and made a pair of free throws. It was as if he ordered the 8-0 run at the drive-thru.
In a blink, Canada was up 12.
But Greece kept pushing, answering with a 10-0 run over their own to cut the lead to two with 64 seconds left.
It was then that the 26-year-old, who finished second in NBA MVP voting this past season, pulled off his most audacious move yet as he cracked a Greek double team with a series of stop-and-start dribble moves before lofting a high-arching floater over the fingertips of Antetokounmpo, who had launched and fully extended his six-foot-11 frame as the last line of defence. He couldn’t get high enough soon enough as Gilgeous-Alexander’s soft spinning lay-up kissed the glass and fell gently through the rim as the Thunder star shrugged and shook his head as if to say, “What’s the big deal?”
It was a very big deal. The seemingly impossible bucket stopped the bleeding and allowed the men’s team to start its first Olympic appearance in 24 years, and just the second since 1988, with a crucial win in Group A play, joining Australia — who handled No. 2 ranked Spain very comfortably in earlier action — at 1-0.
A win over Australia on Tuesday morning would almost ensure Canada advances to the quarterfinals.
Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 21 points, seven assists and five rebounds against just two turnovers. He also blocked two shots and had a steal.
In terms of the bigger picture, he picked up precisely where he left off in leading Canada to their bronze medal at the FIBA Basketball World Cup last summer, which should leave Canada — and Canadians — feeling very good about the men’s team’s chances to earn a medal of any colour in Paris in about two weeks’ time.
NOTES:
• Denver Nuggets star Jamal Murray is the highest profile of the additions Canada made to its successful World Cup roster from a summer ago, joining Indiana Pacers guard Andrew Nembhard, Sacramento Kings forward Trey Lyles and former Toronto Raptor Khem Birch among the new faces. Murray is being counted on as a significant difference maker, giving head coach Jordi Fernandez another elite ball handler and closer to go along with Gilgeous-Alexander, but Murray will have to get up to speed quickly in order to contribute.
Murray has been handled carefully in the build-up after dealing with multiple soft tissue injuries during his season with the Nuggets. He came off the bench for Fernandez and played just 18 minutes. He was 0-for-3 from deep — as a group Canada shot just 8-of-25 (Greece was 9-of-32) — and had three turnovers to go along with three assists. He looked shaky defensively — completely losing his man in the weak side corner on a last-second inbound pass at the end of the first half. Greece missed what was a wide-open three, but Murray’s lack of focus was not ideal. When Greece was making its late run it was fuelled by a Murray turnover as he dribbled into a crowd without a plan and then was caught flat-footed as Vasilis Toliopoulos — a nice player, but not exactly Kyrie Irving — flew past him for a lay-up that cut Canada’s lead to four with 1:16 to play. You can only assume Murray — a proven playoff performer with an NBA title on his resume — will get his legs under him in short order which will make Canada that much harder to defend, but he wasn’t a positive factor in their first game.
• We’ll see if priorities change according to the opponent, but it was clear against Greece that Canadian head coach Jordi Fernandez was prioritizing defence. He started both Dort and Brooks, with Dort harassing over-matched Greek point guard Nick Calathes the full length of the floor and with Brooks the primary defender on Antetokounmpo. And not only did he start Dwight Powell over Kelly Olynyk at centre — a move he went do in the World Cup last summer — but his first big off the bench was Lyles, to give him another body to throw at the Greek star. Foul trouble aside, it was a winning strategy as Dort was a game-leading plus-26 in his 18 minutes of court time while Brooks was just behind him at plus-24 in his 24 minutes, helped as he contributed 14 points and knocked down three triples in four attempts.
• RJ Barrett appears to have picked up just where he left off while playing for the Toronto Raptors this season. The six-foot-six wing became a second-generation basketball Olympian Saturday, following in the footsteps of his father, men’s national team general manager Rowan Barrett, who was a captain on the Steve Nash-led team that went to Sydney in 2000, and the younger Barrett did it in style. Barrett led Canada with 24 points on 8-of-13 shooting, had three assists and got to the free throw line six times, making five. He was forceful in getting to the rim without over-doing it, moved the ball and moved to get the ball and basically looked to be in the same space he was when he finished the season with the Raptors, playing a smart, opportunistic, physical style that fits in easily around good players. Good to see.
