The bronze medal is an underachievement for Kelly Olynyk and his Canadian team

Kelly Olynyk should’ve had more than a bronze medal.

The Utah Jazz only saw one of their players win a medal at the 2023 FIBA World Cup, that was Kelly Olynyk of the Canadian national team, who brought a bronze medal back to Canada. The team was dominant all throughout the tournament, oftentimes posting the highest point totals on a given night. Yet, the team was unable to stay perfect and would end up losing twice.

Resulting in the squad taking home just a bronze medal when it was all said and done. Serbia took home silver, losing the undefeated German squad, who took gold.

Canada should’ve been in the title game, but they lost to the aforementioned Serbian squad and would have to settle for playing Team USA. And thanks to Team USA’s head coach, Steve Kerr, the US squad was never truly a threat.

All in all, Canada underachieved.

The squad had a talented enough roster for them to win the gold, we all saw that throughout the tournament. The team, player for player, had no equal outside of the US, but the Canadians couldn’t play defense against the Serbian national team.

And offensively, they were always hard to stop. Especially in the truncated series of games that the World Cup offers. They’re faster and shorter, with a whole different rule set and clearly, that change in rules affected the Canadians.

So while the world is celebrating everyone who won medals, we simply believed that, with as good as they were, Team Canada underachieved. Yes, the European teams have become very good over the last few decades, but the 2023 Canadians were one of the best offenses that FIBA ever saw, and for them to fall apart right before the finals is truly sad. They could’ve been the top dogs in the international game, and instead, they found out first hand that you can’t win games with offense alone.

Maybe that’ll sink in for the Olympics.