VICTORIA -- Glen Grunwald knows this one hurts, but not all is lost yet.
In the aftermath of yet another disappointment from the senior men’s national basketball team, the CEO of Canada Basketball expressed some regret, but, ultimately, is optimistic about his program’s future.
“It was a tough loss, we had high hopes and we didn’t achieve our goal, but we’re not discouraged,” said Grunwald outside of the Hotel Grand Pacific Sunday, a day after the men’s team fell to the Czech Republic 103-101 in overtime in the semifinal of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Victoria. “We’re disappointed but we’re not discouraged. We know the future is bright for Canada Basketball and basketball in Canada.
“It’s tough. Rome wasn’t built overnight and Canada Basketball’s program wasn’t built overnight, either. It’s a process that we’re going through. I’m very optimistic, I’m very excited about our age-group teams, our development programs and the players that we have on our teams right now, whether it’s the European pros, the NCAA players or NBA guys.”
The optimism Grunwald speaks of may be a little frustrating for longtime fans of the program, because the results haven’t been there and now the team will have to start anew to end its Olympic drought beginning this November, when the first qualifying window for the FIBA Basketball World Cup will be held.
It’s important to remember that there are only two avenues to Olympic qualification now for men’s basketball: the World Cup and the last-chance Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, which also feeds out of results from the World Cup.
In short, the World Cup is a big deal, and because Canada failed to reach the second round of that tournament in 2019, it was forced into the position it found itself in this past week in Victoria in do-or-die games at the OQT.
This qualification system for the Olympics is relatively new, and these OQTs represent the end of the first time a full cycle of this system has played out.
Grunwald is hopeful -- after the program has now gone through a full cycle and is about to begin a new one in advance of Paris 2024 -- that there will be lessons learned from before that will drive home the seriousness of the World Cup, and the team will be able to field a more fully stocked squad for it.
“North America is different than Europe and FIBA is Euro-centric. We’re NBA-centric here in North America,” said Grunwald. “I think communicating with the players and their circle of influence, making sure they understand the importance of all these tournaments, whether it’s AmeriCup next August or the World Cup, or the qualifiers. It’s part of the system and it’s a relatively new system, too, so that means everybody’s learning about how important things are and how we actually qualify. How do we avoid the next Olympic qualifying tournament so we can get in there and start planning and know what’s going to happen?
“It’s a relatively new process that FIBA has and we’ve gone through it now for the first time, so we’ll understand better, we’ll be able to communicate it better and we’ll be able to plan better for these various things.”
As you may recall, in the 2019 World Cup, despite a dream-like list of players whom Canada Basketball sent invites to, the team saw many of its top guns drop out, leaving a thinner squad to try to get the job done.
If there’s greater communication, as Grunwald alluded to when speaking to the importance of participating in the 2023 World Cup, then Paris 2024 may not seem as farfetched as it all feels right now.
It was an honor and privilege to wear the red and white again
Even though we didn’t reach our end goal there is no doubt that @canadabasketball is headed in the right direction @ Canada https://t.co/EJpxOjvZhg— andrew wiggins (@22wiggins) July 4, 2021
At the very least, for this next Olympic qualifying period for the Canadian men’s team, Grunwald seems confident that the program’s head coach will be sticking around.
“We’ve talked to Nick and I’m very hopeful that Nick is going to stick with us. I think it’s one of the strengths of our program that we have a coach like Nick Nurse, who really cares about it, who works really hard at it, who has been part of the recruiting process.”
After Canada’s loss on Saturday, Nurse was a little more mum about his future with Canada Basketball, but this seems to be a much more confident endorsement.
Though it sounds like a broken record at this point to fans of Canada Basketball, Grunwald is genuinely bullish about the program’s future. There’s little doubt Saturday’s loss hurt, and has set the program back. Grunwald believes this period with the pandemic played a major role in some of the difficulties as well, but there’s no reason for panic just yet.
He sees this stumble in Victoria as an opportunity to learn and grow.
“My hope what they got out of this was motivation, both the guys that were here and the guys that couldn’t but they need to stick with it,” said Grunwald.
“I think this year for us was two steps forward and one step back. There’s some long-term learning and there’s some experience here and there’s some growth in our program and our player pool and our coaches, and our staff. What we need to do to be successful.”
