FIBA Basketball
The men's national basketball team has won the 2023 Canadian Press Team of the Year award.
The announcement came 24 hours after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander received the Lionel Conacher Award as the 2023 Male Athlete of the Year.
READ: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander named Male Athlete of the Year
Gilgeous-Alexander and his teammates helped Canada capture a bronze medal at the FIBA World Cup last summer. During the competition, the Canadian team also qualified for the men's Olympic tournament in Paris 2024, its first since the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
Led by coach Jordi Fernandez, who was appointed two months before the start of the World Cup, Canada started their campaign on a positive note by winning all three of their matches in the first preliminary round against France (95-65), Lebanon (128-1). 73), and Latvia (101-75).
Despite losing their first match in the second preliminary round to Brazil (69-65), the Canadians qualified for the second round by defeating the highest-ranked Spanish team in the world (88-85).
In the quarter-finals, the national team beat Slovenia (100-89) before losing to Serbia (95-86) in the semi-finals.
Read: Canada qualifies for the World Cup quarter-finals and qualifies for the Olympics by defeating Spain
However, Canada came back in the bronze medal game, defeating perennial rival, the United States, in overtime by a score of 127-118, the first time such a victory had been achieved.
At the conclusion of the tournament, Gilgeous-Alexander was named to the tournament's All-Star Team, while Dillon Brooks was named Defensive Player of the Year.
This was the first medal won by Canada in an international basketball competition since the 1936 Berlin Olympics.
Read: 5 takeaways from Team Canada's historic performance at the FIBA Basketball World Cup
