The Golden Generation, page 19
“For the people in Oakland, it was just the floor that was taking up space that they were probably never going to use again,” Lake said. “For us, it’s the most important floor in Canadian basketball history.”
The group wanted to ensure that Canada would have its best possible chance of winning the tournament and qualifying for the 2020 Olympics. By hosting the tournament and selling 27,000 tickets within the first two days of release, they figured Canadian NBA players would show up and play well, receiving thank-you messages from several players who were excited to be playing meaningful basketball at home for the first time since high school.
For a couple of small-town Canadian boys who are passionate about the country and the game of basketball, this tournament was their way of giving back. “It was really that profound love of the game and wanting to see the game grow in our country,” Hamilton says.
Plus, after watching Canada fail to secure its best NBA players in tournament after international tournament, they wanted to see Canada’s best players compete. “I wanted to see all of those NBA players come and play on a team so that we could actually fairly represent Canada as a basketball nation against the best in the world, instead of our second-string guys against everybody else’s first-string guys,” Lake says.
What they didn’t know is that a few months after winning the bid in November 2019, the world would shut down due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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When the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 to be a public health emergency of international concern on January 30, 2020, 169everything stopped. Basketball was the least of anyone’s concerns until the NBA created a “bubble” in Orlando, Florida, six months later, providing people with a sense of normalcy and entertainment with the first live sporting event since the pandemic began.
However, the Tokyo Olympics were postponed until the summer of 2021, which had significant implications on Canada’s OQT and the players who were ultimately available to play. After young stars like Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Jamal Murray tweeted out their intentions to participate in the OQT following the disappointing 2019 World Cup, neither was able to play once the tournament was postponed, as Gilgeous-Alexander was entering the final year of his rookie-scale contract, while Murray was recovering from a torn ACL he suffered during the 2021 NBA playoffs.
However, the 21 athletes that did participate in training camp was easily the most talented turnout in the history of the national team. And the final 12-man roster featured a record eight NBA players including Joseph, Wiggins, Barrett, Alexander-Walker, Lu Dort, Dwight Powell, Trey Lyles, and Mychal Mulder. It was rounded out by experienced overseas pros Andrew Nicholson, Anthony Bennett, Trae Bell-Haynes, and Aaron Doornekamp.
The turnout was amazing considering what the players had to go through to compete, quarantining in their hotel rooms for the first 48 hours upon arrival in Orlando, Florida, for training camp — where they used the Raptors’ temporary practice facility — before flying to Victoria and living in a bubble for several weeks. They underwent regular testing, used masks, and had to stay in their hotel rooms in between practices and games. “Man, that was terrible,” RJ says about spending his 21st birthday locked inside a hotel room.
“Living in the bubble for the Olympic qualifier, you could feel that these guys cared,” Hamilton says. “It was very demanding on them.”
Because the COVID protocols were so strict, Canada had little time to prepare and build chemistry, once again throwing together an all-star team at the last minute. Only this time they had even fewer days to practise, getting together in Florida for three sessions — where some of the players hadn’t even cleared COVID protocol in time to participate — before they had three more practices in Victoria.
170“No. There’s no way we were [prepared],” Nurse says. “We were just under so many COVID restrictions of how we could operate and move and everything was eating into prep time . . . Days were disappearing.”
Instead of playing exhibition games like some of their competitors did, Canada had its main team scrimmage against a group of promising young players who were brought into camp, including highly touted NCAA players like Nembhard, Edey, and Bennedict Mathurin — the final cuts who helped Canada’s junior team win bronze at the 2021 Under-19 World Cup in Latvia later that summer.
But the true test would come in the opening match against 66th-ranked Greece. After all, there was no getting off to a slow start in an OQT, where only the winner would move on to the Tokyo Olympics. And it was Greece who came out with a quick start against the Canadians, taking a 50–46 lead in the first half after shooting an 8-of-18 on three-pointers. In the second half, however, Canada started switching one-through-five, allowing starting centre Dwight Powell to prove that he could move his feet on the perimeter and keep up with Greece’s quick guards, as Canada mucked up Greece’s offense and held them to just 41 points and two made three-pointers in the half.
“We have length, guys that can guard one-through-five, and we switched it up in the second half,” Alexander-Walker said. “It turned in our favour. Got us out of rotation a bit more. Cut out the threes and we were able to be ourselves.”
Wiggins was the best player on the floor in his first game in the red and white since 2015, finishing with 23 points and 6 rebounds. He also had the two biggest buckets of the game, hitting a couple mid-range jump shots in the final two minutes to take Canada home, winning 97–91.
“We knew it was going to be a big learning experience and our first game together with this team against a very, very good team,” Nurse said. “I thought we did well to hang in there for the first half.”
The following game versus 29th-ranked China was much easier, as Canada ran away with a 109–79 win behind 20 points from Wiggins, 16 points from Barrett, and 12 points and 9 rebounds from Powell.
Through the first two games, it was obvious that Canada’s identity lay on the defensive end, with plenty of switchable wings who could 171guard multiple positions and pressure the ball to force turnovers like Alexander-Walker, Dort, Barrett, and Wiggins. But it also became clear that Canada was small compared to its competition, and as a result, the team’s most important player was arguably 6’10” big man Dwight Powell — the one traditional centre on the 12-man roster after Olynyk, Birch, and Thompson all dropped out of the tournament due to contract issues or injuries.
“He’s had two really good games,” Nurse said. “I think [what he brings is] just his energy and his effort in a lot of facets with his speed, rebounding, physicality, and communication.
“The anchor of our defense and the anchor of our rebounding.”
Powell wasn’t the flashiest player in the world, but he was always in the right position at the right time, using his footwork to break up lobs in the pick-and-roll, deter shots at the rim, and box out bigger opponents for rebounds. Plus, as one of the most experienced players on the team, after having represented Canada since 2015, he was a leader who constantly communicated with teammates and told them where to be. “I’m way more comfortable [beside him],” Dort says. “Sometimes when I get beat, I can trust him to go get it for me.”
The interesting thing is that if the tournament had been held a year earlier as planned, Powell wouldn’t have even been able to play because he was recovering from an Achilles tear in his right leg that he suffered in January of 2020. Joining Canada for the OQT was a motivating factor throughout his surgery and rehab process.
“For the Olympics to be pushed back a year, for me, athletically and physically,” he said, “it’s a massive opportunity.”
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Powell was born in Toronto in 1991 where his Jamaican mother, Jacqueline Weir, raised him.
He played every sport growing up, shifting from soccer to volleyball to cricket to track and field, where he specialized in high jump. Powell was on the 510 Spadina streetcar on his way to a high jump practice at the University of Toronto in grade 9 when he met someone who would change the trajectory of his life.
172“I see this kid in front of me who looks great for basketball,” Vlad Matevski, who was on his way to a men’s league basketball game, said. “We both get off at U of T and I’m going to the second floor where the gym is and he continues up the stairs to third floor.”
After two weeks of taking the same streetcar to U of T, Matevski finally asked Powell where he was going, and Powell explained that he had a high jump practice on the third floor. “I’m like, ‘What do you mean high jump? There is zero chance you’re training for high jump,’” Matevski says. “You should play basketball!”
As a teenager, Matevski immigrated to Canada from Macedonia, where he had been following in his father’s footsteps as a pro basketball player since he was 16 but had to stop due to the war. He moved to Toronto with his wife and ended up playing for Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) before transitioning to coaching the Toronto 5-0 — a club program for underprivileged kids sponsored by the Toronto Police Service — where Matevski transferred his player development knowledge from Macedonia to Toronto’s youth.
Matevski gave his contact information to Powell to pass along to his mother, who eventually called him and agreed to send her son to a practice. “I ran him through drills. He almost collapsed,” Matevski says. “I told him, ‘Listen, you need to be playing basketball.’” At the time, Powell was already being recruited by American prep schools to play volleyball and track and field. But Matevski could see that with Powell’s combination of size, footwork, balance, strength, and work ethic, “he’s gonna have a bright future in basketball,” Matevski said. “And he should make a decision now.”
Powell had a crush on basketball from the first time he played with his friends in the park. “The feeling of coming together was — as cliché as it may sound — addicting,” he says. But it wasn’t until Matevski came along that Powell started to take basketball seriously, making it his top priority just as Matevski was starting the Real Basketball Training group. “I think first and foremost it was his love for the game but also his respect for the game,” Powell says of Matevski. “He was a basketball purist, if you will. And his focus was always on the right skills for the right situation regardless of your perceived position or role.”
Matevski’s training philosophy is holistic, teaching players to learn every position and different skill sets so that they are versatile and 173understand the game. Powell would practise with Vlad’s Toronto 5-0 OBA team and then work on individual skills afterwards. “We worked on everything under the sun, and I think that level of detail made the game so deep for me,” Powell says. “It was so interesting because I realized how much better I could get and how much room there was to grow.”
After meeting Ro Russell and joining the famous runs at Falstaff alongside Joseph, Thompson, Kabongo, Cadougan, and Ashaolu, Powell started playing against the city’s best players and going on regular trips to the United States for AAU tournaments. “Even though he was not as far developed in his basketball career as us yet, he wanted it,” Kabongo says. “And he kept coming to the gym, kept putting the work in . . . Every time you saw him, he was adding something else to his game.”
Powell transferred to IMG Academy, a prep school in Bradenton, Florida, for grade 10. It wasn’t an easy transition, as Powell was living alone for the first time and had to play catch-up to his American counterparts who had been playing basketball since they were kids. But his work ethic was undeniable.
Inspired by his mother, Jacqueline — who left Jamaica alone when she was nine, graduated from Eastern Commerce Collegiate, and went straight to work as a bank teller while going to night school so she could eventually move into the executive ranks — Powell worked harder than everybody else. “That’s just how I was raised,” Powell said. “My mom instilled in me at a very early age that you can dream big and there is nothing wrong with dreaming big. But once you have goals and you have these things in mind that you want, it’s your responsibility to do everything in your power to achieve them.”
After a few years at IMG, Powell turned down a scholarship to Harvard in favour of Stanford, where he committed to fulfilling a long-held promise to his mother that he would get a degree before leaving for the NBA. Unfortunately, ahead of his junior year at Stanford, Jacqueline passed away after a long battle with breast cancer.
“It was just me and her, [and her] biggest thing was making sure I had opportunities to be as successful as I wanted to be,” Powell said, finding out that she was sick three days before she passed away. “So she kind of went through the whole struggle on her own and kind of kept it to herself.”
174The Stanford basketball team flew across the country to attend the funeral, and then Powell flew back to California to finish what they had started. He was named the Most Improved Player in the Pac-12 that season before averaging 14 points, 7 rebounds, and 3 assists as a senior. He was drafted 45th overall in 2014 and spent 11 years in Dallas, where he became the longest-tenured Maverick and made over $79 million in his career.
“Everything I do — even before, when she was alive — was to make her proud,” Powell said. “Especially now I understand, I’m carrying a legacy for both of us, trying to make sure all the lessons she taught me I’m continuing and walking with her in mind.”
Powell dreamed of being an Olympian since he was a kid and was further inspired by teammate and Mavericks icon Dirk Nowitzki — who raved about the Olympic Opening Ceremonies being unlike anything he experienced in his career. Powell got the chance to represent Canada at the 2015 FIBA Americas in Mexico City after his rookie NBA season, barely coming off the bench during their loss to Venezuela.
However, by the time the 2021 OQT rolled around, Powell was Canada’s starting centre who, for better or worse, was needed on the floor at all times.
* * *
Canada topped Group A with a 2-0 record and a plus 36 point differential, resulting in a semifinal matchup against the 11th-ranked Czech Republic. At that point, 21st-ranked Canada was the heavy favourite to win the entire tournament, with a starting lineup of Joseph, Barrett, Wiggins, Lyles, and Powell, and reserves Alexander-Walker and Dort. Czech captain Tomas Satoransky said that Canada is “the second-best team in the world if you would just go by names.”
But while Canada was an all-star team made up of eight NBA players, it lacked experience and continuity, with five players making their senior team debuts and only Joseph returning from its previous competition, the 2019 World Cup. “In my mind, we haven’t done anything yet,” Joseph said. “Yes, we have a talented group of players, but we’ve got to put it all together.”
175The Czechs, meanwhile, had nine returnees from the 2019 World Cup, where they finished sixth. Still, they began the tournament with an 87–70 loss to Turkey and followed it up with a come-from-behind 80–79 win over Uruguay, where Satoransky dropped 19 points, 7 rebounds, and 8 assists.
“This is a very experienced European team. Most of them have great size like this, experience, and shooting,” Nurse said. “They’ve played with each other for a long time.”
The Czechs started a bigger unit to create a size advantage against the smaller Canadians, inserting 6’6” shooter Blake Schilb and 7’0” Ondrej Balvin into the lineup alongside 7’0” Jan Vesely in the frontcourt, creating a 14-foot frontcourt and mismatch opportunities for the Czechs to attack. In fact, whenever the Czechs saw an opportunity to feed one of their big men in the post, they did so and played off that, usually either getting a layup, free throws, or kicking it out for an open three whenever the Canadians sent a double team.
Despite being allowed about 10 percent capacity (or about 800 fans) to attend the game at the Save-On-Foods arena in Victoria as the first live sporting event in Canada since the pandemic began, it was the Czechs that got off to a 15–6 start before Nurse called a quick timeout. The bench got Canada back in the game towards the end of the first quarter, when Dort forced turnovers on three straight possessions while Barrett and Alexander-Walker provided a scoring punch, finishing the quarter down 29–27.
But the Canadians struggled to contain the Czechs’ massive frontcourt, getting out-rebounded 52–39 and blocked six times at the rim in the game. And despite keeping it close for most of the second quarter, they collapsed once Powell picked up his third foul with three minutes left in the half, leaving the game for the offensively-minded Nicholson as the Czechs hit back-to-back threes and ended the half up 52–44.
Canada got back in the game due to strong play from Dort, Alexander-Walker, and Barrett — who played a team-high 40 minutes and finished 23 points, 5 rebounds, 6 assists, a steal, a block, and zero turnovers, refusing to settle for jump shots as he drove to the basket time and again. Plus, the Canadians tightened up their defense with Powell back in the game in the second half, holding the Czechs to just 15 points in the third quarter 176as they sent fewer double teams to the post and executed their rotations better. “I thought we adjusted really well,” Nurse said. “I think that we played the way we needed to play in the second half, but it took us kind of too long to try to adjust.”
However, Canada shot just 9-for-37 from three, good for 24 percent. The Czechs, meanwhile, hit 46 percent of their threes, with Schilb out-shooting the Canadians by himself for most of the game, finishing with seven made-threes and a game-high 31 points. “In the second half I thought we had a lot of really good open looks,” Nurse said. “And it just didn’t bounce our way tonight.”
It looked like Canada’s hopes of qualifying for the Olympics were over when, with 3:09 left in the game and the Czechs up 83–77, Balvin posted up Powell and was fouled on the shot. After seeing that Balvin was bleeding, the referees went to the video monitor to review the play and determined that after Powell fouled him, Lyles came over to try to block the shot and his elbow made contact with Balvin’s head on his way down. It appeared to be unintentional, but the refs called it an unsportsmanlike foul, giving the Czechs four free throws — two for the foul on Powell and two for the unsportsmanlike call on Lyles — and the ball. “There was nothing unnatural about it to me,” Nurse said. “Just two guys playing hard and going for a rebound and people getting tangled up.”
