Despite the loss and despite the abhorrent offensive performance, I actually came away from last night’s game feeling pretty good about team Canada’s effort. I thought they showed true grit and played solid defence. I really liked the job Anthony, Kendal and the other bigs did at controlling and frustrating Splitter and the other Brazilian post players. That said, the aforementioned offense was almost non-existent. Now, Brazil’s defence was pretty strong, but Canada has to do a better job of getting open looks. Their main problem IMO is that they lack a true offensive post presence. Anthony is solid defensively and on the boards and Kendal is a live body, but neither has much of an offensive game. Denham Brown, Shephard, English and Rautins supplied little to nothing from the wings last night and if that continues this team will really struggle to win any games. Joseph showed flashes but was tentative in my opinion, which is to be understood as it is still early in his international career. They will need to execute a more dynamic offensive strategy. More pin downs and pick and pops and more movement generally for English and Rautins and they need to push the ball to take advantage of Brown and Shephard’s athleticism. They also need to be more disciplined, as there were a lot of wild attempts from the wing players with high degrees of difficulty. All that said, I was encouraged by the way Rautin’s team played D last night, so I suppose that’s half the battle.

FWIW, here is the plus/minus for the game:

Points
Joseph -6
Anderson -6

Wings
Brown +11
English -6
Rautins -13
Shepherd -16

Bigs
Kendall +1
Olynyk -2
Doornekamp -4
Young -6
Anthony -13

Re Anthony’s defense, when he was on the floor, the team gave up 39 points in 24 minutes.
Compared with 30 points in 16 minutes when he was not on the floor.
So a slight improvement when he was there.

But the offense suffered significantly when he was on.
They only scored 22 pts in 24 minutes, compared with 35 in the 16 minutes he was off. That is a huge difference.

I think their best stretches came when they had no true C in the game, and it was 2 of Kendall, Doornekamp, and Olynyk.

Re the wings, despite Brown’s horrid shooting performance, the team performed very well when he was in the game. +11 when every other wing was -6 to -16 is pretty impressive.

The difference was largely on the offensive end. 38 points by Canada during Brown’s 21 minutes, a mere 19 pts during the 19 minutes when he was off.

27 allowed during his 21 minutes on, 42 allowed during his 19 minutes off. So they were also better defensively when he was on the floor.

The offense really ground to a halt when Rautins was on the floor. Canada scored 37 pts during his 22 mins on the bench, and only 20 during his 18 minutes in the floor.

IMHO, English and Rautins are similar players – largely spot shooters with little dribble drive ability, and it doesn’t make sense to have both on the floor on the same time. That is, it should be one of Brown/Shepherd with one of English/Rautins at all times.

Yesterday they were outscored 13-3 when English and Rautins were both out at the same time.

Anyway, too much shouldn’t be read into one game’s plus/minus, but I thought the numbers were interesting.

The lack of a go to guy at the end of the game really hurt them… also, when brazil took the lead in the fourth quarter, the team just looked like it lost much of the fight they had during the rest of the game, possibly due to the fact that they know they have nobody who is a true “closer” on their team… still, i rarely, if ever, look at the national team play and came away fairly impressed, considering we were playing a highly regarded team like brazil and hung tough for much of the game… it will be interesting how we fare in coming years with the expected increase in talent in tristan thompson and kabongo