Here's how Canada can qualify for the 2024 Olympics in men's basketball

It might be nearly a year until the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics, but Canada has their eyes set on correcting one of the most agonizing droughts in the country’s history of team sports.

For a country that hasn’t seen its men’s basketball team compete at the world’s biggest sporting event since 2000, the team has a great opportunity ahead of them to qualify via the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup, which tips off this Friday, August 25.

But it won’t be easy.

For the 32 teams competing, there are just seven of 12 qualification spots at the Olympics to be had via this year’s World Cup — and either two or three allotted to teams from North, Central, and South America combined.

Two Olympic spots are guaranteed to the Americas via their performance at this year’s World Cup, with a possible third up for grabs should one of the seven Americas teams win it all.

It’s an exclusive club to play in the Olympics, and despite being just one of two countries to have an NBA team, Canada has long struggled to get their stuff sorted out on the international basketball scene.

In 2021, they saw their hopes of qualifying for the Olympics dashed with a loss to the Czech Republic in an Olympic qualifying tournament held in Victoria, BC.

But despite the absence of Denver Nuggets star guard Jamal Murray, who was ruled out last week, Canada is still expected to have one of the stronger rosters at this year’s tournament.

Conceivably, Canada should be in conversation to reach the overall podium at the tournament, with Oklahoma City’s Shai Gilgeous-Alexander — who finished fifth in NBA MVP voting this past season — leading the way for the red and white.

Here are the seven teams from the Americas, with their current World Rankings in brackets:

• United States (2)
• Brazil (13)
• Canada (15)
• Venezuela (17)
• Puerto Rico (20)
• Dominican Republic (23)
• Mexico (31)

After a three-game round-robin to start the World Cup, 16 teams advance to the second round of the tournament, where the teams will play another three games each for a spot in the quarterfinals. The results from all six games will be taken into account when determining quarterfinal spots, with Canada hoping to be in the mix as late into the tournament as possible.

Weirdly, if Canada is one of the final three Americas teams left but falls before the two other teams, they’d actually be cheering for one of their rivals — likely USA or Brazil — to win the whole tournament.

But as we’ve seen in the past, it’s much easier said than done on the international basketball scene.

If Canada doesn’t finish as one of the top two Americas teams at the World Cup — or top three if one of the other Americas teams wins the whole tournament — they’ll be forced to enter an Olympic Qualifying Tournament for one of the final four spots, with host France getting an automatic bid to next year’s Olympics.

Twenty-four teams will compete in four separate tournaments hosted around the world, with 19 of those spots allocated to teams already competing in this year’s World Cup.

One of those 19 spots is allocated to each of the highest Americas, Europe, and Africa teams that don’t automatically qualify, with the other 16 going to the 16 best-performing teams that didn’t automatically qualify already for the Olympics.

Sound confusing enough?

If you want to watch the Canadian team play without worrying about the long-term implications, you can do so this coming Friday on Sportsnet when they take on France at 6 am PT/9 am ET.

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