What to take away from Barrett, Olynyk performances at Olympics

Barrett offered plenty of encouragement while Olynyk left a lot to be desired

Still feeling the pain of that Canada men’s basketball exit against France in Olympics quarterfinals? Me too.

This was a golden opportunity squandered to avenge the 2000 quarterfinal defeat and guarantee a medal game. France made a huge discovery when benching Rudy Gobert for the second half of their final group game against Germany and the manner in which their guards and forwards have excelled since with Victory Wembanyama as the lone big is a huge reason they will now play for gold against the U.S.

Even with France’s adjustment, the degree to which Canada’s guards and wings not named Shai Gilgeous-Alexander struggled leaves such a bitter taste in the mouth. Having rewatched that first quarter, I think you could play that game another nine times over and Canada would look nowhere near as bad as they did in those first 10 minutes. It’s equally confounding and infuriating how bad they were. Hopefully it’s that bitterness that will see them go at least one step further in 2028. Oh, what could have been.

This newsletter is all about the Raptors, though, and with that in mind, it’s time to shift focus to R.J. Barrett and Kelly Olynyk’s performances in a Canada uniform.

Let’s start with the bad news first: Olynyk was absolutely dreadful and it is strange that he couldn’t even be a marginal contributor for a team sorely lacking positive impact from its bigs. Averaging nine minutes per game, Olynyk averaged 1.5 points and 2.0 rebounds.

That being said, I’m not concerned to the point where I think we should definitely expect some sort of carryover to the NBA. The league has tilted in favour of Olynyk’s style of play (perhaps even more than Canada’s opponents at the Olympics did) and having the next couple months to regroup and reset should have him ready for Raptors training camp and raring to contribute to a team with lower aspirations than medalling at the Olympics.

Olynyk is entering his age 34 season and averaged 12.7 points, 5.6 rebounds, 4.6 assists, as well as 1.3 steals in 28 games as a Raptor. After starting out frigid from deep, he finished better to shoot 33.8 percent on threes with Toronto. Olynyk’s numbers were certainly inflated by starting in the absence of Jakob Poeltl, then further boosted by the suspension of Jontay Porter.

Bruno Fernando has entered the mix at centre and I see him as a third string centre who could start in the absence of Poeltl while keeping Olynyk in his role. There could be nights where Olynyk may be better served playing power forward depending on the matchup as well. While the Canadian’s scoring will most likely dip, the rebounding and assist numbers could remain in the neighbourhood of last season in a best case scenario.

Now the good news: Barrett was very good for Canada, averaging 19.8 points, 5.5 rebounds, 3.5 assists, and a steal while finishing a plus-26 in 114 minutes. He shot 65.6 percent on twos and 43.8 percent on threes (remember, FIBA threes are shorter than NBA threes by about a foot-and-a-half).

Perhaps the most relieving aspect of Barrett’s performances was watching him knock down his free throws. Barrett shot 62.9 percent from the free-throw line in 32 games as a Raptor last season but made 16 of his 19 foul shots (84.2 percent) at the Olympics. As a Knick earlier in the season, Barrett made 83.1 percent of his foul shots but is a 71 percent free-throw shooter for his NBA career.

I’m not going to assume the Olympics success means he’s going to be an 80 percent free-throw shooter next season, there is more evidence against it than for it at this stage of his career. I did see enough, though, to believe that Barrett should continue to be efficient as a tertiary scoring option for Toronto. I thought Barrett built up some really good chemistry playing alongside Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and in the games where there were solid contributions from the role players, Barrett stood out. It’s only against France where you didn’t get enough from the “others” that Barrett’s offence seemed inadequate.

We saw controlled drives to the rim, a bit of bully ball, and rhythm catch-and-shoot threes that were staples of his scoring diet for the Raptors. Long may that continue.

Defensively, we did still see some struggles. France had Isaia Cordinier outwork him for open looks as the primary matchup while also getting the likes of Mathias Lessort and Guerschon Yabusele to post up on him when the mismatch presented itself. This end of the floor is going to be the X-Factor in determining whether Barrett can be a guaranteed piece of the long-term core.

Over the rest of the summer, I’ll dig into the improvements we should hope to see from the key Raptors players going into the 2024-25 season.