Halford & Brough in the Morning - Will Canada Basketball Medal At The Olympics?

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

In hour two, Mike & Jason discuss the latest football news with NFL.com's Nick Shook (1:07), they hear more from Jim Rutherford on Elias Pettersson's season (15:00), they discuss Canada Basketball's chances at the Olympics with PxP man Dan Shulman (23:55), plus they talk the Oilers Stan Bowman hire (38:00). This podcast is produced by Andy Cole and Greg Balloch. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rogers Media Inc. or any affiliate.

702 on a Wednesday. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Halford Brough, Sportsnet 650. Halford Brough in the morning is brought to you by Pacific Honda, North Vancouver's premier destination for Honda vehicle sales and service. You can visit them online at pacifichonda.ca. We are in hour two of the program. Nick Shook from NFL.com is going to join us in a moment here.

Training camps are underway. Very exciting week in the National Football League. Hour two of this program is brought to join us in a moment here. Training camps are underway. Very exciting week in the National Football League. Hour two of this program is brought to you by Primetime Craft Beer. Meticulously brewed for quality and taste, Primetime is full flavor without compromise. You can get some at a liquor store near you, or you can visit the brewery to see how it's made. We are coming to you live from the Kintec studio.

Kintec Canada's favorite orthotics provider, powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews. Sorfie, what are you waiting for? Kintec, that Kintec Canada's favorite orthotics provider powered by thousands of five-star Google reviews. So, Orfee, what are you waiting for? Kintec, that's what you're waiting for. To the phone lines we go. Nick Shook joins us now

on the Halford & Brough show on Sportsnet 650. Good morning, Nick. How are you? I'm fantastic, guys. How are you? We're good as well. I was excited to get you

on the program because training camps are underway. Everybody's reporting. Even Aaron Rodgers wanted to whip around some of these stories at the quarterback position.

Let's start with Rodgers and the New York Jets. He missed a couple days of OTAs to take a trip to Egypt, as one often does. I just had to know, now that he's back, now that he's talking, now that he's participating, what can realistically be

expected from Aaron Rodgers as the New York Jets starting quarterback this season? That's a great question because how often do we see a guy who's 40 years old coming off of a torn Achilles who had the elite reputation of being one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL over the course of his career? We don't. We don't really ever see this happen. Before Tom Brady, we didn't see a lot of guys get to this age and still continue playing, and especially at a level that we expect them to, you know, remain near the top. But I think that what we are going to see is a guy who, after learning maybe the hard way last year,

has taken his health more seriously, understanding that his body doesn't bounce back quite as well. And somebody who had to spend the entire last year watching the team that he was supposed to save struggle without him. I don't know if you're going to see a difference in his personality. I think that's pretty set in stone for better or worse. But hopefully what you see is that he can still sling it, that he can operate this offense, that he can take advantage of the weapons that are around him and finally take a little bit of the pressure off of that Jets defense,

which has been quite good since Robert Sala arrived. It is another proving year for the Jets, and it all starts with, of course, with Aaron Rodgers, who even said he knows he'll play this year, and he wanted it to be two years with the Jets, but we'll see. So it's all in this year. We'll see what happens. And he's not committing to anything beyond this year, right? Yeah, essentially he said, you know, when he arrived,

he wanted to have two good years with them before retiring. Obviously last year was a complete wash. And so he's just focused on this year. I would not be surprised if they had a good year this year, they just fell short of whatever their goal may be. I mean, everybody's goal is the Super Bowl, but if they just fell short of, I don't know, reaching the conference championship or something like that,

I could see him, you know him running it back one more year. But again, he's unpredictable. There's not many cats like him. So he's a tough guy to solve. So we'll see. But he definitely did just commit to just this year right now. So speaking of Aaron Rodgers, what's going on with his replacement in Green Bay, Jordan Love?

He's not practicing. How much longer are the Packers going to wait before they get a new deal done here? I think it's going to be done pretty soon. It's just a matter of, look, we understand what's going on. We're working on a deal. If we being the Packers sitting back and

realizing, look, this is the guy who blossomed down the stretch last year and has proven himself as our franchise quarterback. There was a lot of uncertainty prior, but we see the vision and we only expect more of that in the many years ahead. And you pay people like that now before it gets even more expensive. So I don't think they have all that much motivation to wait. And he's also entering the final year of his deal right now,

so they've got to get that done, I think. And it'll happen before long because the best thing the Packers can do is pick up right where they left off last year. And in order to do that, that you got to have your quarterback is there a big contract situation out there that you could see resulting in a trade uh that's you know that's interesting because fed the time yesterday talking about and considering the whole Tyreek Hill thing uh because you know he's kind of putting it out there that he wants a new contract, and he told his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, just whatever you do, don't get me traded.

So he can eliminate that, right? Also, he just got a bunch of money a few years ago, so it's that far away. The Brandon Iyuk situation, though, is very much, there's very much a potential for him to get traded. He's already requested a trade. He did show up to camp, but even John Lynch,

he said, I'm not going to speak in absolutes, and we're going to work on it, but I'm not going to say that he's going to need to be on the roster because we can get a godfather offer. If I had to rank him, I think Brad and Iyuk is the most likely to get traded by far. Hassan Reddick is holding out,

but he just got traded. So that's kind of a strange situation. So I think IU is definitely at the top of that list. I want to go back to New York. Aaron Rodgers' counterpart with the Giants, Daniel Jones. So season-ending ACL tear in 2023. Where is he at in terms of being ready to go? And how long is the leash

going to be for him given that even prior to the tour in ACL the results were not great after signing that big money extension with the Giants. Yeah, not great at all. Felt like he kind of reverted back to who he was in his early years and it kind of

made me look at 2022 his first year under brian dable and and realized not even realized but except what i thought at the time which is i think this is a fluke i think this is a flash in the pan i don't think the giants are this good and i don't think daniel jones is this good and and when i say this again i mean he statistically he still didn't put up gaudy numbers he just looked confident and above he'd actually lead his team to victories and then last year of course course, he had neck injury and knee injury. And he gets banged up a lot, man.

And if you look at the way that the contract is structured, the one that he signed with the Giants four years, $160 million, you could tell that in the back of their minds, you know what, we're not fully confident that he's just going to find a way to be consistent and stay healthy. Now, if you look at his game's play, he actually hasn't missed a ton of games until last year. But he's just always banged up.

And it affects his play. He was put behind a poor offensive line early in his career. They have a better offensive line now. So this is the year. This is the make or break year, I think, for him, because they already kind of flirted with the idea of trading up to maybe draft a quarterback this past offseason and the pressure is on right now because i think if it comes down to it they'll choose brian dable over daniel jones if they have to make a decision like that so he said he's ready for camp um we'll see but it's it's super

important for him to be fully ready for camp in such a pivotal year for his career we're speaking to nick shook from from NFL.com. Here's training camps open across the league on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. There's so many quarterback questions, and a lot of them are like, who's going to be the starter? Who is going to be the starting quarterback for the New England Patriots?

Oh, man. Well, Gerard Mayo just talked about that yesterday, and he said, Jacoby Brissette is the starter now. And I agree. Okay. He also said Drake May could win the job. If he does, well, you know, he's not going to eliminate that from consideration.

He also threw Gil Milton's name in there, because why not? Every quarterback, Bailey Zappi, you get a shot, too. Every quarterback on the roster has found this job. I think it's Jacoby Brissett right now. I mean, obviously, that's what Mayo said yesterday, but I think it will be Jacoby Brissett unless Drake May does something in camp that I don't foresee at this point,

which is just completely light it up. You know, we have a bit of a smaller preseason window now with only three games, and it's not as much time to prove yourself. We have been surprised before. This is the franchise, different coach and everything. This is the franchise that pulled the rug out from under us and Cam Newton and decided to name Mac Jones

for starter week one in his rookie year. And cut Cam Newton and just move on entirely. This is not the Bill Belichick Patriots anymore, though. I think they're going to return to more of a conventional way of doing things. I mean, Mayo played for Belichick, coached under him, so it's not going to

be completely conventional, but I think it will be more than it was under Belichick. So I think you're going to see Brissette and maybe they'll turn to May before long. But I mean, Brissette's done a great job as a veteran. He's a low-ceiling guy,

but he's a plus backup and a veteran start. And you can keep the ship afloat. And, you know, if the rest of your roster isn't as quarterback dependent and can be, you know, effective, like your defense is good and your running back is solid,

they just paid Ramondre Stevenson, and if your receiving core is all right, then Brissette will help you stay competitive. He'll win games for you. It's just that you don't want to have to ask him to win them for you by himself. And I don't think that he's going to be asked to do that. So that's probably where they start with him

because there's no rush. I mean, this where they start with him because there's no rush. I mean, this is a whole new regime. There's no rush. Yeah, because when you have a quarterback class like we saw in this year's draft, you're excited to see them all play. I'm like, I'd love to see Drake May play in New England. Also, like J.J. McCarthy in Minnesota,

who's going to be the starter there to begin the year? Is it going to be him or Sam Darnold? I'm very curious to see what comes out of Vikings camp because when he was drafted, I'm very curious to see what comes out of Vikings camp because, you know, when he was drafted, I'm very torn on J.J. McCarthy. Okay. Because I see the intangibles and the winning attitude and everything, the reputation.

He was a very effective quarterback at Michigan. But we don't draft. When you draft on intangibles first, you get into a dangerous area where it's like, wait a minute, what about the physical attributes? What about, you know, the things that are actually going to be needed at the next level of football? I thought he lacked

in some of those areas. I didn't think his combine workout was good. And the combine is not end-all, be-all, but it just kind of backed up what I thought, which is that I think this kid's going to get overdrafted because he was at Michigan, won a national title and was the leader of that team. Love the

moxie of the kid. Love the personality. Big fan of that. Rooting for him. But in the NFL, that often doesn't get you over the hump. Usually that's like the spice on top of the dish that's already made with top shelf ingredients. And I'm concerned to see I'm fascinated more than I'm concerned

because Drake May, or not Drake May, excuse me, J.D. McCarthy was you know, he was drafted to be Kirk Cousins' long-term replacement, and it felt like it was written in the stars for a while, especially once the draft order kind of sorted itself out. And yet there's Sam Darnold, and everything you heard out of minicamp and OTAs was that Sam Darnold is kind of clearly the starter right now, like clearly getting the lead reps, and McCarthy's going to need a while.

So Kevin O'Connell's the right coach to get McCarthy to a point where he can be effective. I just, at that point, we're testing the physical attributes, and I just don't know. I'm very uncertain about whether he'll ever live up to his first-round status, and we'll see. But I think it's going to be Darnold's job right now.

Yeah, so the Vikings play the Bears on November 24th. That'll be their first matchup of the year, classic NFC North rivalry, and they're both going to have these super interesting questions and conversations at the quarterback position because there might be a battle at that stage of the season

as to who's going to be the starter for Minnesota. There won't be for the Bears. It's Caleb Williams' time, and it's ready to go, and there's been a lot of hype, countless articles I've read already talking about how excited everybody is.

Again, when you match up the hype with the reality, what are realistic expectations for Caleb Williams in that Chicago Bears offense this season? This is one of my favorite examinations this time of year because everybody loves the Bears. People are hyped. People are hyped. People are hyped.

They went and got the receiving core. They got running backs. They finally addressed all these needs on offense. They got all these shiny toys. And I agree, because you've got to realize where they came from. I mean, they were just a team devoid of talent on the offensive side, and we're slowly piecing together on the defensive side. They are a fun team on paper right now,

and I'm very interested to see what happens. But you're also attaching your immediate hopes to a rookie quarterback, and that is often, say for guys like C.J. Stroud, that is often a dangerous game to play. I think that, look,

Caleb Williams, I'm not going to say he's generational talent. He's a hell of a football player. He had some accuracy issues in the final year of USC. Some people say that was due to some issue that he was dealing with, a hand issue. I don't know. I think he was – he's not going to be a guy who lights the league on fire right away, but he could have a pretty quick learning curve and do so.

But right now, we don't know. So what do I think about the Bears and how it relates to Caleb Williams? Well, this league is very quarterback-driven and quarterback-dependent, but they have done a good enough job to surround him with the pieces that Justin Fields deserved and never got. So hopefully this first round to take a quarterback works out this time and the Bears can finally have a franchise gap. I thought we were going to discuss Joe Burrow's hair.

Also Joe Burrow's hair. Well, I mean, if you're a big fan of the you know, the real Slim Shady and Eminem's Hey Day, I think it all works out. Why do you think he went there? Like, he's a few years late on that. Did they all get buzz cuts, though? Was it a Bengals buzz cut thing? But it's not the buzz cut.

It's the fact that it's bleached. Yeah, it's blonde. It's sure blonde. I don't know. Here, look, I'm not going to criticize how in tune you are in fashion because I'm not either. But I have a couple of sisters who are part of Gen Z. The 90s are very big among Gen Z right now, which will make us all feel very old, right? And as a kid who grew up in the 90s, I remember the bleach blonde hair and the frosted tips and all that stuff. So I think

you're seeing a part of that trend going there. And you know what, though? Look, if you're going to shave your head, as somebody who used to shave his head with clippers and actually had hair and now is bald and shaves his head with a straight razor, you got to do the blonde over that, like, Sandy Brown, because the Sandy Brown just looks dirty. Right. Okay. All right.

This was a very encapsulating hit. We managed to cover everything. I'm just impressed that the 90s are, like, retro now, because it feels like they were just yesterday for me. Oh, I know. The 80s are retro. It killed me. I know.

But the 90s? It was always having an 80s party, and now these kids are having 90s parties, and I'm watching all these things that were fashionable when I was a kid come back, and now I just realize I'm old. Yeah, you know what I call a 90s party? A party. It's just a party. I was counting crows on the jukebox or whatever. Nick, thanks for doing this today. Yeah, you know what I call a 90s party? A party. It's just a party.

I was counting crows on the jukebox or whatever. Nick, thanks for doing this today. Preseason begins a week tomorrow. It's Caleb Williams and the Bears hosting the Texans on Thursday, August 1st. So we're there. We're getting closer and closer. Thanks for doing this. We'll check in again soon. All right, guys.

Thanks. Thank you. That's Nick Shook from NFL.com here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. I saw one of those tweets, one of those stupid, do you feel old or are you this old tweets? And it was just a picture of Blockbuster video. It made me so irrationally angry. I'm like, what do you mean am I this old?

That just happened. Yeah, yeah. Are you old or are you 35? Blockbuster is not old. You saw it. You were like walking to Blockbuster before you remembered that, wait a minute, that doesn't exist anymore. I'm so angry.

Let's get back to this Jim Rutherford interview with Bob McCallum and John Shannon that we've been playing snippets of throughout the show. Let's play, okay, this is for me. Let's play Jim Rutherford talking about Elias Pedersen and the season he just had and the season he's hopefully going to have next season. Well, they'll spend some time with him, certainly, and the respect works both ways between the player and the twins.

But, yeah, I mean,, Patterson had a good regular season and he learned from the playoffs. This is part of learning. When you get in the playoffs, you don't have nearly as much room and as much time to do things. And he admits that himself. And, you know, he'll be well prepared from that from that learning experience they get a lot more attention they they they

don't get as much room and that's what he found out you know he was uh got a lot more attention from the opposition and now he has to learn how to react to that but but this is you know with this format of the playoffs compared to covid this is the first time uh you know our good young players have been through that but even when you take some top players that play in the playoffs every year five years in a row six years in a row they could get to a point where they have an off playoff so so i'm i'm not overly concerned about it this is a very talented player that cares about the team and pd will be fine so here's my reaction when i heard that great if if if that was what rutherford said about Quinn Hughes, then I'd be like, yeah, okay. Because I think Quinn Hughes found the playoffs a lot more difficult

than the regular season when he had such a good season that he won the Norris Trophy. And then in the playoffs, he found that there were going to be teams that were just going to go all in on him. Why does everyone keep hitting me? Yeah, yeah. Leave me alone. Let me make plays.

There's less space. The thing with Pedersen, and agree or disagree with me on this, guys, or any listeners, you can text in to the Dunbar-Lumber text line 650-650. I didn't see the Pedersen season as great in the regular season, struggled a bit in the playoffs. I saw it a lot different than that. I saw it great in the first, I don't know, two thirds of the regular season, then the

all-star break hit and then he went precipitously downhill and just never recovered. Well, I mean, I think the most logical follow-up question would have been like, well, Jim, what about the last two or three months of the regular season? Like you were saying, like, what about the last two or three months of the regular season, like you were saying? What about the February where he scored two goals? And the eye test was just like, what's going on here?

Yeah. And I know exactly what Rutherford's doing, because the question was posed to him about the poor postseason. So it was an easy answer. It's like, good players have had bad postseasons before, and we're confident he'll bounce back. The question would be, what happened in the second half of the season

and the playoffs? And it's not just a playoff thing. And you could point to eye tests, you could point to production. Both of them weren't up to $11.6 million a year. They weren't. And I can't stop thinking that his production and his play started to falter.

And I know there was a tendonitis issue there. That's a whole other story that we won't get into right now. The knee, the knee. The, I can't stop thinking that his play started to suffer as soon as the contract stuff came up and it was like, we heard, you know, the Canucks are putting pressure on Elias Pettersson to talk. And that really started off in, you know, the Canucks are putting pressure on Elias Pettersson to talk and that really started off in, you know, in reality at the All-Star break because it was the perfect time to go talk, right?

As soon as you started leaning on him, Bruff, that's when it started. It's true, actually. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm not pointing fingers here or anything, but. If we're going to talk about things that coincided with the slum,

we got to bring up all of them. We got to bring up all of them. Let's play another clip because I don't want to talk about this much. Well with the slub we gotta bring up all of them we gotta bring up all of them uh let's play another clip uh because i don't want to talk about this much well hold on hold on let's let's just say one more thing here um they did and there's an unspoken understanding here that they went out and added debrusk who uh rutherford said himself he envisions as being a 30 goal guy they added daniel spr, who is an offensive-minded player. And I think those were both nods to, we are going to strip away any excuses or reasons

why Pedersen won't be productive. That could easily be a line. Petey, DeBrus, Sprung. We are going to take away that narrative, which was, oh, glorious chances we're falling under the sticks of and i it's the big three for me at this point because i've said it so many times in the playoffs mckeough dj sepe lafferty throw another guy in there if you want um i hoaglander had a tough playoff too and relying on those guys to be contributing wingers in clutch moments

with Pedersen occasionally centering them was not ideal. They've stripped that away unless injuries hit and there's like real problems up front on the wings where you have to plug those guys in. But I mean, it's very obvious to me anyway that DeBrusque is coming in

as a guy they were really high on. This is the management group that they saw more offensive ability from, which is what Rutherford said specifically, and a guy that's tailor-made to play with Pedersen on that line. That way you don't have to break up the third line and you don't have to break up the Besser and Miller pairing. And you plug and play, and away you go. And if it doesn't work then,

then I think you have a problem and a real situation that you have to resolve. But at this point, I'm willing to give the management group the benefit of the doubt that they acknowledged that their forward group wasn't quite right last year in terms of personnel and what they needed. Mikheyev was a mistake. They acknowledged it, and they moved on from it.

Right. And this is a, this is an opportunity for them to clear that mistake off the books and then try something new with a guy that they very clearly have identified as a player that they liked over the last few seasons. So we got one more clip from Jim Rutherford to play and we'll play that perhaps in the next segment after we talk to Dan Shulman. So Dan is going to be calling the men's basketball at the Olympics.

And I'm sure he's really looking forward to that because he's a big basketball guy, but he's also a baseball guy. So we can talk a little bit of Jays with Dan Shulman. I don't know how much more there is to talk about the Jays until the trade deadline actually happens. I have zero Jays questions prepped, Dan. I'm all basketball on this one. Yeah, okay. Dan, why am I so sad? Why do I have a pit of despair in my stomach

every time I watch this team? Is this a Blue Jays question? Well, I think one of the big questions right now is what's going on with Jamal Murray, and I don't know if Dan will know anything more, but he's been limited in the warm-up games. Jamal, not Dan. Yeah.

Dan's been fine. Dan's been fine. Jamal Murray has been limited in the warm-up games, and hopefully he's ready to go for the real thing, which starts real soon because he's obviously a big part of the Canadian team and their hopes to get a medal in Paris. You're listening to the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. One final thing to tell you before we go to break.

What about the BC Lions? The roar is back at BC Place for the BC Lions 70th season. Get your tickets now at BCLions.com. 7.31 on a Wednesday. Happy Wednesday, everybody. Halford Brough, Sportsnet 650. Halford Brough of the Morning is brought to you by Primetime Craft Beer. Meticulously brewed for quality and taste. Primetime is full flavor without compromise.

You can get some at a liquor store near you, or you can visit the brewery to see how it's made. Let's go to the phone lines right away here. Talk a little Canadian hoops with the voice of Canadian hoops at these upcoming Olympics. Dan Shulman joins us now on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. Morning, Dan. How are you? I'm good. How are you guys doing?

We're good. We're very excited for the start of this tournament, not just because Canada has such a strong team and is a strong medal candidate for the Games, but a lot of people in the lead-up have said that this might end up being one of, if not the best, international basketball competitions of all time, given the depth of field and the talent going. 11 of the last 13 NBA MVPs are going to be playing in this tournament.

Canada's got a closed-door scrimmage today against Brazil in the latest of their warm-ups. I want to ask you, based on what you know and what you've heard, how ready and healthy is Jamal Murray when the tournament gets underway? Well, you've asked me the one question I can't answer. Perfect. Good start by me. Nice job, Mike. Yeah, we don't know. And we're probably not going to find out much more today.

I certainly don't think he's going to be playing 30 minutes a game. Right. But even if he's able to play 15 or 20, I think that's great. And I'm of the opinion that if you're only going to get like partial Jamal Murray, that maybe it's better to use him a little bit more when Shea Gilgis-Alexander is not on the floor. You know, maybe let him be the second unit scorer or something like that so you know we we haven't seen enough of gilgis alexander and murray together to know how well they're meshing so um it's kind of a wait and see like like i'm of the opinion i'll believe he's on the team when i'm sitting there saturday and i see him and and he's in uniform to play Greece. So the other thing is, I think who plays and how much they play and who starts may shift from game to game to game. Like, do you want to

loot Dort in the starting lineup against Greece, but maybe you don't need him against Spain, you know, that sort of thing. So, you know, it's kind of the nature of the beast with Canada basketball where it's, well, people are, why isn't Wiggins there? Why isn't Eadie there? What's wrong with Murray? And, you know, and I understand it, but there are 11 other players on this team, eight of whom were part of a bronze medal winning team at the World Cup. And they're all extremely, extremely important. And if Murray can give them something, that's great.

But ultimately, I think the fate of this team is going to be decided more so probably by other players, because even if he plays, I just, I don't get, like, there's nothing to suggest he's going to be a 30-minute-a-game guy, right? So I think Shea and R.J. Barrett and Dylan Brooks and Lou Doard and Dwight Powell and Kelly Olenek and all those guys, I think ultimately are going to be maybe even more important because they've been immersed in this program for a while now. Dan, how would you power rank the group that Canada's in with Australia, Greece and Spain? One, one, one, one. It's a tough one.

It's the tough one. So this is going to sound strange. I think it's the easiest one to win, but the toughest one to advance out of. And let me explain. So I know a lot of listeners probably don't know how all of this works. There are three groups of four. The top two in each group advance, and then the best two third-place teams, based on record or points differential. I don't think any of the teams in Canada's group, Australia, Greece, or Spain are as good as the United States, probably not as good as Serbia,

and maybe not as good as Germany. Like Germany won the World Cup. So the USA and Serbia are in a group and then Germany and France are in a group. It's possible all four of those are better than Australia, Greece, and Spain. So like Canada could go 3 and oh and win the group if they were in with the USA and Serbia. I don't think I'd be saying that. But there is no question that the bottom of this group, whoever it is, is significantly better than the bottom of the other groups. And this is nothing against Puerto Rico, South Sudan, Brazil, and Japan. Like nobody gets lucky to get into the Olympics, but I think we could probably all agree, even with what South Sudan did in the exhibition game against the U.S., those four are probably weaker than Australia, Greece, and Spain.

And if you're Canada, you just, the first goal is, I mean, you want to win your group, but you just, you want to get to the quarterfinals, right? And so to do that, you've got to be in the top two or not lose a tiebreaker with the other two third place teams in the other groups. And that's where this group worries me is somebody really good in this group, maybe two really good countries. You know, somebody is going to go 0-3 probably. And they could lose the three games by a total of like six points. You know, they're all so close.

And will your point differential not be as good as it is in the other groups if somebody runs it up on Japan or Puerto Rico or something like that a little bit? So, you know, the easy thing to do is just win, right? If they go 2-1, it would take an incredibly, incredibly improbable, unlucky group of tiebreaker things for them not to advance. If they go two and one, they're going to be fine. If they go one and two, they're rolling the dice. And you just never know.

So it's going to be intense and stressful for every Canadian basketball fan because every possession from the first tip on Saturday is going to feel like game seven of a Stanley Cup final it's going you know it's going to to be that important I don't know how to handicap them I think they're good enough but honestly guys I've watched a lot of the other three you know you remember the game against Spain in the World Cup and Spain is better now they've added Lorenzo Brown who's a naturalized citizen. He's their starting point guard. He was not in the World Cup. Greece has Giannis.

They don't have the deepest team, but they've got Giannis and a fantastic FIBA point guard and Nick Calafas and all kinds of size. And Australia's got eight NBA players. Like we talk about Canada having 10. Australia's got eight, including Josh Giddey and including Patty Mills, who is one of these guys who's good at the professional level and phenomenal at the FIBA level. He's one of those guys. So none of these games are going to be easy.

And I know a lot of people are going in with a tremendous amount of optimism, and that's so exciting. And I love all of that. I just want to caution people that FIBA is different, and they are in the toughest group and and they're going to have to win a couple of games to get out so what's the game plan against greece how do you beat greece with yannis and all their size what what does canada try and do to either stop yannis or can they just run and gun and try and outscore them what's the plan i'd love to see them run and score in transition i don't think greece has the athletes or the depth to keep up with canada in the quickness department um but as you said you know the number one thing you talk about whenever you play a team

with yannis is yannis so um i dylan brooks and lou dort are incredibly important and if they make a few shots that's great uh dort and brooks i mean I think you've got to have one of those guys on Giannis and the other guy on Kalathis. Kalathis is the ultimate head of the snake. You guys will see when you watch the game. He orchestrates everything for them. He was born in the U.S. He's of Greek descent.

I remember doing games when he was at the University of Florida like a long, long time ago. And now he's a bald guy like me, but he's a little younger than I am, but he looks like me now. So but he's terrific. And I would have Dort and Brooks try to make life as miserable as they can for Calathes. And then, you know, maybe Nikhil Alexander Walker comes in and he gets Calathes. Like I would try to exhaust Calathas. I really believe he's the head of the snake. And, you know, you need Dylan Brooks, assuming he's on Giannis, and I would imagine he is. You need him to just make life hard, make him take tough shots without picking up fouls. You

know, FIBA's funny. You can get into a wrestling match and not get called, and then you can get the smallest touch foul you've ever seen in your life. And, and Brooks and Dort and everybody else, they've had experience now from last year in the exhibition games now about what type of stuff gets called and what type of stuff doesn't, but international players are very savvy about, you know,

drawing fouls in FIBA games. So incredibly important in my mind to have Brooks and Dort available as many minutes as they can just for defense. We're speaking to Dan Shulman here on the Halford & Brough show on Sportsnet 658. Dan, earlier last week we had Nabil Karim on the show. We were talking about some of the rotational guys and who might be someone that maybe we're not all that necessarily familiar with but could play a pretty prominent role in theselympics and he mentioned andrew nemhard right away and you know i watched him in the playoffs and what he did when haliburton was out and how he elevated his game and what a great year he had for the pacers news comes down today that he's just agreed to a three-year 59 million dollar extension with the pacers so i feel like

there's a lot of good vibes for nemhardhard going into these games. What can we realistically expect from him at the Olympics? I think he's going to be huge, and I agree 100% with Nabil. I think Andrew Nembhard is not going to be a bit player on this team. I think he's going to be incredibly important. Part of that is due to the uncertainty of Jamal Murray. And I think that's the reason they absolutely needed and wanted Andrew Nembhard on this team. He is a, and Andrew, I know Andrew a little bit again from college, and I saw him at training camp and we talked a little bit,

and he feels the FIBA game is well-suited for him, and I agree with him. You know what, he's got a little Nick Calafas in him, you'll see when you watch Breeze. In terms of running an offense you know andrew's not the quickest guy in the world although he's quicker than people think he is but he can get where he wants to get he can he's got stop and start in different speeds and he's tough to guard and he can run an offense beautifully and you know there was some draw shea had to play so many minutes in the world cup. I don't know what it was, 32, 34, 35 out of every 40-minute game. And there was a big drop-off after that.

There's not going to be nearly as significant a drop-off. I think without question, whenever Shea Gilgis-Alexander isn't on the floor, Andrew Nembhard is going to be on the floor. You've got two legit NBA point guards, and that's not even talking about Jamal Murray and what he might be able to bring. So I agree with Nabil 100%. I also think a couple of the underrated big guys up front, Dwight Powell, to me, who is

like Mr. Unsung Hero each and every time, all he does is get rebounds, defend and take elbows to the face from bigger players all the time. Like, Gobert is going to elbow him in the face, and Embiid is going to elbow him in the face. Like, it just happens all the time. And he just, you know, gets the bruises and keeps on trucking. And I think Ken Burch is important. I think he's another sneaky guy. They don't have quite as much size as the other team, some of the other teams.

But I think Birch gives them another guy who's played in FIBA. People maybe wouldn't remember, but he was on the World Cup team in China in 2019. They didn't do well, but he and Corey Joseph were great together. They were the best part of the team. And I think having another big body to help out Olenek and Powell is going to be important. But yes, hands down, Andrew Nembhard is the answer to that question. Jordy Fernandez, I actually really like the job that he's done as a head coach. I know he came in under kind of difficult circumstances when Nick Nurse abruptly departed,

but I thought he did a great job at the FIBA World Cup. And in reading a lot of the deeper analysis, they just said, I know this sounds kind of simplistic, but he has a really great knack for moments in the game, squeezing minutes out of guys that maybe aren't necessarily rotational guys or finding spots in games to utilize guys to save some minutes, especially key in tournament play, right? I think he did it with one of the Scrub Brothers at the World Cup, brought him off the bench in a tight game where he was able to get like 10 minutes out of a guy that wasn't a rotation

player. How important is his performance going to be? Because as you mentioned, all these group games look like they're going to be? Because as you mentioned, all these group games look like they're going to be super tight, super close-knit affairs. It could be one of those things where one or two coaching decisions really makes a difference. Yeah, I think adjustments on the fly are very important because every game is so different. It's not like the NBA, where by and large, styles are similar or the same. Every country plays a different style.

Jordi Fernandes obviously is intimately familiar with that. Having, you know, being from Spain and having coached for Spain as an assistant coach on their national team and played Spain last year, like he knows Spain's playbook as well as Spain knows Spain's playbook. So, yeah, I think quick adjustments are going to be important. You know, Brooks picks up a second. Who's going to go on Giannis? This isn't working.

What are we going to do here? But eight of the 12 on this team played for him at the World Cup. Jamal Murray with Denver, obviously. Jordy was an assistant with Denver. Trey Lyles. Jordy was an assistant with Sacramento. Ten of these 12 guys know him extremely, extremely, extremely well. And I think they've got a ton of faith and trust in his decision making. And, you know, when we see him

interviewed, you know, you see a microphone in front of his face. He's a very soft spoken guy, but he gets his message across in the huddle. I remember a couple of famous huddles from the World Cup. And this is one of the beautiful things about FIBA. Let's listen in. And hey, you're for better or for worse, you're listening in. And there was one, I think it was in the first game against France, like they beat France by 30, but they were down pretty big early. And I think, you know, he just looked at them and said, like, guys, what the look at the scoreboard or we're down 12 or what? Like he got their attention fast. He can get their attention when he needs to. And having led them to a bronze medal when he only became the coach six weeks

before the world cup, you know, if you've got buy-in from Shea and you've got buy-in from Kelly Olenek and you've got buy-in from Dylan Brooks, you've got buy-in. Everybody on the roster is, is going to trust everything that he says, but, but you're right every game means so much and they're only 40 minute games not 48 minute games so you know every possession means a little bit more as well canada greece saturday this saturday it's coming up just three days away very excited for this tournament dan i know you're up against it for time thank

you for joining us today enjoy the olympic tournament all right, guys. I will. I'm sure of that. You enjoy it back home as well. Thank you, Dan. Appreciate it. That's Dan Shulman, the play-by-play voice of Canadian Olympic basketball here on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650. So a couple of things hockey-related. Number one, the Stan Bowman hiring in Edmonton is predictably creating quite a firestorm on social media.

Are you suggesting that the website formerly known as Twitter, now X, is polarized? Polarized, yeah. That's a word. It's polarized. Can you blame them? No. So when is the press conference?

10 a.m. our time? 10 a.m. our time. So that'll be some interesting things for the rest of the shows on this station to cover and for us to cover tomorrow to look back on the questions that Stan Bowman is asked and what's answered. I find one of the issues with this situation is that there's so much information and misinformation out there, you know, like people will just throw all sorts of things like, um, you know, I'm, I'm not, I'm not, I'm seriously not protecting Stan Bowman here or Joel Quenville, but like people are like, you know, they knew and he didn't do anything. And, you know, then he wrote letters of recommendation and the people got a lot of

facts like missed, you know, like they've got the general idea. Sure. But I still think there's a lot of people that don't know exactly what happened. So I wonder if Stan Bowman is going to be asked to like go through it again. Possibly. In his press conference. Just to be asked to like go through it again. Possibly.

In his press conference. Just to be like, just to reiterate, what did you know? What did you do? What did you learn from it? I hope it's not too much about like, what did you learn from it? Because that kind of like, you know,

you can prepare an answer for that, right? Sure. You can prepare a real, you know, silky smooth thing. People want to know whether they feel comfortable or not. If you're a fan of the Edmonton Oilers, should you feel comfortable with Stan Bowman as the general manager of your team?

Now, here's the other thing that the press conference could end up talking a lot about and spending a lot of time as opposed to the other stuff is like the Oilers have some big decisions to make. You know, they've got Leon Dreisaitl who's available for an extension right now. Connor McDavid's going to be in that situation next summer. And we've talked about how tricky that could be for the Oilers.

If Dreisaitl only wants to stay if McDavid stays, then how do you go about that if you're the general manager? They've got Evan Bouchard who is going to need a big deal at some point. Does that necessitate training a guy like Darnell Nurse? And can you do that? So there are all sorts of issues for the Edmonton Oilers, but I really do hope that – I don't want to say, I don't think it's intentional misinformation, but this story was so complicated and it was shrouded in secrecy for so long that I still think that there's a lot of people out there that don't know all the facts of the story. Yeah. Does that make sense?

Well, yeah yeah that's also a common theme on social media right not just not knowing all the facts but also having a lot of misinformation out there i think with this case though the more you dig into the facts the worse it kind of looks on a lot of these guys i don't know how much digging you guys have done what okay so explain that well just the the catastrophic mismanagement that kind of led to this whole thing and now the the way you're putting him in charge of this group now i'd like to know what the players are thinking of as this is our leader now and something that he did in the past led to such a horrible horrible incident and he's he's

just reinstated back to the league like they did not have to hire him this soon after being reinstated but they're putting all their their eggs in his basket i just i don't i don't get it from a fan's perspective i'd like to know from the player's perspective right but but the thing i always come back to is i try and put myself in the situation that stan Bowman was in. Now, obviously, the number one bad guy in all of this was the guy who did the abuse. But the number two bad guy in my mind was John McDonough, who was the CEO or the president of the team,

who told Stan Bowman and Joel Quenville and others, I'll deal with this. You guys focus on winning the Stanley Cup. I'll deal with this. You guys focus on winning the Stanley Cup. I'll deal with this. Right. Now, obviously, Stan Bowman and Joel Quinville hold some sort of responsibility for this because they should have, you know,

followed up on that. Well, there's also the... But the number one guy for me and the guy that should really never work again in any sport is John McDonough who said, I'll handle this and then, you know, didn didn't right but the the issue goes beyond what happened within the blackhawks organization just was kyle beach because brad aldrich uh on the strength of a recommendation from the organization that went on to work in hockey that's the big and perpetuated

abuse so it's not just about this singular incident, which is why I think when you're talking about the full picture, that is part of the full picture. Yeah. It's fine that your boss said that he was going to take care of something within the organization, but all of them were cognizant enough to know that this individual went and worked and caused more damage elsewhere outside of the organization. Very good point. So that's something that. So that's what I would like to like it be, in some ways, reiterated with this. Right. And I don't know if they're going to do that. I honestly don't.

I mean, you talk about all the different facets of it. There were a lot of Edmonton Oilers fans and media who thought that Jeff Jackson should just serve as the general manager of the team. He was the one that orchestrated this offseason, which a lot of people gave very positive grades to. He was the one that completed the trade for Matthew Savoy. What's his name? Savoy? Savoy. Yeah. And that was seen as like a good stroke of ingenuity

to get a young prospect in the door when you didn't have the draft capital available to you. So there's a lot that's going to be unpacked. They're going to have the media availability at 10 a.m. our time. So obviously we'll be off the air, but we'll be back tomorrow unpacked they're going to have the media availability at 10 a.m our time so obviously we'll be off the air but we'll be back tomorrow to parse through it all by the way speaking of tomorrow's show like the the the just just to bring it back to the letter of recommendation like you know i'm reading something from the edmonton journal here and it says one common allegation is that the blackhawks gave aldrich a reference letter or recommendation for future jobs

jenner and block dug into this and found no evidence of this. So that's what I'm talking about with, I don't want to call it misinformation, but because misinformation sounds like intentional. Sure. Confusion maybe? I mean, with the reference letter, I think the point would be is that reference letter or no, they were cognizant of what the individual did in their organization. Maybe should have been more proactive in making sure that he never got a job.

You don't work again in hockey. Yeah. Well, proactive is kind of the number one word, right? Proactive would be like going to your boss, John McDonough, and be like, hey, whatever happened with that? Did you follow up with that? Mm-hmm. And these are some of the questions that he will –

he's going to be dogged with from the moment that he's introduced in two hours' time. I just don't understand. I know we've got to go to break. I just don't understand the upside to the hire. Like, they just – it's like the Babcock thing with the Blue Jackets. Like, what is the positive here? All the Oilers are doing is going to create a negative media storm around this,

and rightfully so. I just don't get, like, do they think Bowman is, this guy is going to turn them around? Yeah, like, is he the one? Like, do they really think this guy is going to turn them around? I don't know. Well, they clearly do because they hired him as general manager. Yeah, well, yeah, I know, but is it the name? Is it the Bowman them around? I don't know. I don't understand. Well, they clearly do because they hired him. Well, yeah, I know.

But is this the name? Is it the Bowman? Like, I don't get it. I just don't, no matter how you spin it, I don't understand it. Oh, it's the same with, I mean, a lot of people thought Ken Holland had lost his fastball at the end of his Detroit era. Yeah. Yeah.

And then they hired him. So, at any rate, listen, it's going to be an interesting press conference with Stan Bowman, and that's coming up real soon. Thomas Drance is going to join us next. And Drance had an interview with Rick Talkett. And I don't know if he has an article published on The Athletic yet, but I imagine an article is either up right now or coming real soon. So we'll talk to Drance here about his interview with Rick Talkett and what he took from that.

Coming up next on the Halford & Brough Show on Sportsnet 650.