“No risks. No calculated risks. We got to win.”
Rowan Barrett set the tone for the SMNT on the first night of training camp for the 2025 AmeriCup. Unlike the 2022 installment of the marquee Americas tournament, which Canada Basketball treated as more of a “developmental” opportunity, bringing a collection of inexperienced and unproven players surrounding then Toronto Raptors guard Dalano Banton, the baseline talent level of the 2025 AmeriCup roster better aligns with the “Best In. Best For” strategic vision CEO Mike Bartlett established earlier in the year. Improving on their surprise fourth-place finish from three years ago and winning the tournament outright (for the first time in the nation’s history) will undoubtedly be the focus for the group in 2025. And it’s a realistic goal for the projected roster this time around.
I would imagine the final 12 flying to Nicaragua will include the more seasoned SMNT players along with the two NBA newcomers in Kyshawn George and Leonard Miller. I would also expect the two EuroLeague talents (Mfiondu Kabengele and Isiaha Mike) to feature prominently and be Canada’s most impactful players throughout the tournament. The inclusion of G-League standout Charles Bediako in a more developmental role will be key as Canada Basketball aims to get him up to speed with the “Winter Core”.
After kicking off a five-day training camp at the OVO Athletic Centre in Toronto, the SMNT played two closed-door scrimmages, one against the Niagara River Lions of the CEBL and then another after flying down to Miami to take on the United States (which ended in a loss). The SMNT will conclude their tournament prep in a final exhibition tune-up against the Dominican Republic on Tuesday night (August 19th) in the host city of Managua.
The three-game exhibition tour (which is really only a single “real” game) trails far behind some of the other contenders in the tournament (the defending champions, Argentina, have scheduled a total of 10 exhibition games in multiple continents) and is unfortunately representative of a systemic issue that has plagued the Men’s program, from bottom-up, for years. At the U16 AmeriCup training camp earlier this summer, HC Chris Cheng compared the standard week-long camp to a “sprint”, where the margin of error is razor-thin due to the lack of preparation time. Similar sentiments were voiced by GLOBL JAM HC, Dave Smart, at the end of U23 training camp, who mentioned installing a system that was “as simple as possible” after having just “three days [of] practice”. That lack of preparation manifested in a disjointed Canadian offense that limped to a last-place finish at GLOBL JAM last week. Nathaniel Mitchell, HC of this year’s AmeriCup roster, meanwhile, brushed off those concerns, highlighting the continuity the returning core of players have already developed through past competitions.
Well, continuity. I think we’re bringing back seven or eight guys from the last window. Even though [Kyle Wiltjer] wasn’t in that window, he’s been here with us. So, I think I don’t really look at it is as something handicapping us. It’s going to be more of a situation where we continue to grow every day through film, on the court practicing hard and we should be ready to go.
Nathaniel Mitchell
There’s reason to believe that Canada Basketball officials are well aware of the issue and are at least taking initial steps to address it. In an appearance on the Canadian Basketball Show hosted by Libaan Osman, Bartlett indicated that “[the AmeriCup roster] is predominantly built from the guys that we’re going to roll with in November and February [qualifier windows], because the AmeriCup gives us a one-week cohesion experiment to make sure the system works”. The hope is that investing time now to build continuity amongst a new “Winter Core” will pay off in the coming months and power Canada to a “4-0 [start] in World Cup qualifying before the NBA guys rejoin [the team] next summer”.
On the court, expect the SMNT to play fast and continue to ratchet up the ball pressure. The extended, frenetic defense has become a defining quality of the SMNT in the Jordi Fernández era and has served the “Winter Core” well in the AmeriCup Qualifer windows since Fernández stepped down. As veteran guard Trae Bell-Haynes put it, “we want to pressure 94 feet [..] it’s one of the things that we’ve been emphasizing the most on day one. Picking up the ball chest to chest, turning ball handlers. The word is annoying. We want to be annoying.”
The twentieth edition of the AmeriCup kicks off on August 22nd, and culminates on August 31st. Canada is drawn into Group B and will face off Venezuela, Panama and Puerto Rico (who will feature New Orleans Pelicans guard José Alvarado). The top two teams from each group, along with the two best third-place teams, will advance and be re-seeded for the knockout stages. Winning some hardware (and some key FIBA ranking points in the process) is a solid way to start of this new Olympic cycle.
