Team USA beats demoralized Canada is basketball exhibition game. Sadly it will probably mean the end of the road of team Canada head coach Leo Rautins.
Rautins was a controversial choice for the national job from the start, primarily because he’d never been a coach. One of Canada Basketball’s motivations was the hope his profile as a broadcaster with the Toronto Raptors would lift the profile of the team and the sport. He worked hard at that aspect of it, recruited new talent to bolster the team and hired respected assistant coaches to fill in the gaps.
But the increased profile has come back to haunt him, with the glare hottest just about the time Dalembert was kicked off the team, and Slovenia and Croatia cut off the Canadians’ oxygen.
Controversy and a lack of results make the decision easy: Let him go.
After all, blaming the coach is a tradition at Canada Basketball. It’s simpler than holding a faulty, underfunded and poorly organized infrastructure accountable.
Tony Ronzone, an executive with the Detroit Pistons and an expert on international basketball, just shook his head when asked about Canada’s prospects in Athens. "It’s going to be tough, man," he said, a euphemism for "Are you kidding?"
Another NBA executive with close ties to the European game was equally incredulous: "Maybe if you had Nash and maybe if Dalembert was playing the way he can play, [Canada could have qualified]. But only maybe. Without them, never. There is too much talent in Europe."
