Team Canada's "Most Talented Team Ever" Won't Even Medal After Getting Completely Destroyed By Guerschon Yabusele
Jamie Squire. Getty Images.Outside of Team USA, no one else in the field brought more NBA players to the Olympics than Team Canada (10). We're not talking about NBA benchwarmers either. SGA is largely regarded as a top 5 player and MVP candidate, Lu Dort is considered one of if not the best perimeter defenders in the NBA, Jamal Murray is an NBA Champion, Andrew Nembhard just had a breakout postseason, Dillon Brooks can do some things etc. They were a team many considered to be a real threat not just to medal, but to actually win Gold.
Whoops!
In reality, they won't even medal. Despite being 6.5 point favorites against France, it was a wire to wire beatdown for the host country, and not for the reasons you might think. Heading into this game I think most people assumed that for France to win, guys like Wemby were going to have to have monster games. If Canada had one weakness it's their size, and given that's France's strength it's safe to assume that using their Wemby/Gobert size advantage was going to be the difference.
Here's the thing though. Wemby didn't really do anything in this win. In fact, 3 of the 4 NBA players on their roster didn't do shit!
How was this possible? Simple. It started with this guy doing the majority of the lifting
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That's right, Guerschon Yabusele. Make no mistake, Yabu was the best player on the floor today for France which obviously not only warms my heart
but is also extremely funny. A guy who was maybe a little ahead of his time during his stint in the NBA was suddenly giving an entire roster full of legit NBA talent all the problems in the world. Canada had no answer for his shooting and size, and it got to the point where we witnessed YABU of all people get double teamed. Anyone who watched his Celts tenure knows how crazy of a sentence that is, but France really had no choice.
Speaking of former Celts dominating Canada, this was also true for Evan Fournier down the stretch. Another one of these guys who morphs into a monster as soon as they play in a FIBA game, Fournier was nails in the final moments of the 4th to help put Canada away
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It just goes to show you, even if you are loaded with talent that doesn't mean you're invincible. France was quicker to the ball, way more active on the offensive glass (even with Gobert only playing 3 minutes), and considering SGA was the only one who showed up offensively which led to him running out of gas late and missing FTs/getting blown by defensively, this result shouldn't be all that surprising. In pretty much every facet of the game, France was the better team.
Having talent on paper is cool and all, but it's rather important that the talent actually show up once you get to this stage. Safe to say that did not happen with Jamal Murray at any point in these Olympics (3-13, 1-4 today)
and for all his talking, Dillon Brooks sure had a stinker (1-9, 0-3). I'm sure he'll be open to talking about this and won't avoid the media!
Andrew Nembhard after looking so good in previous games didn't even take a shot in his 14 minutes off the bench. Kelly Olynyk didn't score and barely played.
Let's call this what it was. Canada choked. All the talent in the world and when it came time to put up or shut up they couldn't get it done. For France to pull off a wire to wire win where they never trailed for even a second is nuts, and now they try and continue this Cinderella run with a matchup against Germany which should certainly live up to the hype.
From a Team USA perspective, it obviously doesn't hurt that the team with the second most NBA players on their roster is now out of the tournament, but I also don't think they would have had too many issues had they faced Canada anyway. Their size was going to be an issue just like it was with France, they already handled Canada in the tune up games, so instead they should look at this game as a reminder that they have to play the right way and that anyone can be beat on any given night.