France vs Canada Odds, Picks & Predictions: Olympic Men’s Basketball

Olympic Men’s Basketball has entered the knockout rounds, and host nation France will kick things off with a matchup against a formidable Canadian team. France has immense talent, but looked shaky through group play, while Canada went an impressive 3-0 in the so-called “Group of Death”. 

With Canada’s strengths all on the perimeter, and France’s all on the inside, Tuesday’s quarterfinal promises to be a hotly contested clash of styles.

My France vs. Canada prediction is that Tuesday’s contest will be decided by ball pressure and guard play.

France vs Canada prediction

My best bet
Canada -7.5 (-110)

My analysis

Olympic basketball is fun in part because it creates genuine clashes of styles more often than the NBA, where the copycat nature of the league and the overall level of talent at every position can have a homogenizing effect. 

France and Canada cannot play similarly to one another because they simply don’t have the pieces to do so. Canada’s best players are all guards and France’s best players are both centers. France’s guards are fringe NBA guys at best, and while Canada’s bigs are NBA players, none are close to starter quality.

France meanwhile has the reigning Defensive Player of the Year in Rudy Gobert paired with the best basketball prospect since LeBron James in Victor Wembanyama. While not a simple fit on offense, their interior length, tenacity, and instincts are off-the-charts good.

One of the places that might show up is on the glass. Canada has been getting killed on the offensive glass regularly. France will try to win the possession game there to swing the math in their favor. 

But they’ve been unable to play Wembanyama and Gobert together much and still have a functioning offense. While one of them can still hurt Canada on the glass, it won’t be at a margin that Canada hasn’t comfortably overcome in every other tournament game so far.

Canada will leverage speed and mobility to combat France’s size, they’ll switch liberally and force Wemby or others to beat them over the top. While Wemby can do so, there are enough offensive liabilities on France that he might end up facing more than one defender at any given time.

In either case, he’ll have to fight over human fire hydrant Dillon Brooks or the most NFL-ready body in the NBA in Lu Dort. Wemby has a lot of gifts at his age, but the lower body strength needed to push those guys around is still a few years away.

Canada leads the tournament in points off turnovers at 22.3 points per game and France has arguably the weakest collection of ballhandlers at the guard position to advance to the knockout rounds. Canada’s ability to simply stop offensive possessions before they start should prove decisive.

Given how well Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and RJ Barrett have been scoring the ball, playing France to a standstill on defense should be more than good enough to cover at -7.5.

Wemby shows his range

My Victor Wembanyama prop: Over 1.5 threes

Wembanyama’s minutes have waxed and waned as head coach Vincent Collet tries to maximize his and Gobert’s impact while dealing with their overlapping positional skill sets. Like the San Antonio Spurs (eventually) realized last season, Wemby is best played as a center.

In a single elimination game, I expect Victor to win out in a competition for playing time. While Gobert has a lot of pull with the national team, Wemby is both their foundational offensive piece and the future of the program.

And offense is what will be needed against Canada, particularly from players other than France’s guards. Canada’s bigs are not highly mobile, nor do they have great length to contest Wemby. While Wemby will do plenty of work inside, I expect him to keep the Canadian bigs honest by pulling aggressively from three as well. 

Forcing hard closeouts should lead to more effective drives. Canada has been leaning on Birch more as the tournament has gone on, while he provides some interior shot blocking and strength he is not the fleetest of foot.

Wemby has taken 16 threes through three games, or an average of 5.3 per game. Despite creating many of those off his own steam, he’s hitting them at a 43.8% clip, or 2.3 makes per game. I expect him to stay aggressive in a win-or-go-home scenario on Tuesday.

France vs Canada same-game parlay (SGP)

One of the primary reasons that France has not fared as well as their raw talent might suggest has been their disastrous play at guard. That can be tied to two things, one, the team hasn’t done much to develop new guard talent in recent years nor have they included younger, rawer prospects who will be features of the national team starting with the next Olympics.

But secondly is Evan Fournier’s decline. Fournier isn’t a point guard, but he has been a critical offensive initiator for France, and their best on-ball player since Tony Parker’s retirement from international play. He’s regularly led the team in scoring and has been one of the most efficient players in FIBA ball.

Fournier fell out of the New York Knicks’ rotation before being shipped off in a salary dump to the Detroit Pistons last season in part because Fournier’s play tanked soon after signing a lucrative four-year deal with the club. This Olympics the decline is on full display, as he’s averaging just 10.3 points per game on a grisly 32.1% from the field.

Going against the best perimeter defense in the tournament is not likely to do any good for Fournier’s crumbling production. Physicality and on-ball pressure are things that have long bothered Fournier, and they’ve only proven more difficult for him as he’s lost some of his explosion at 31 years old.

Learn how to bet a same-game parlay with these helpful tips and strategies.

France vs Canada odds

Odds as of 8-5.

France vs Canada game info

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