Xaivian Lee got into some live action this past week as he competed for Canada in the Global Jam, a small exhibition tournament in its third year that features an under-23 roster from Canada, one team from the NCAA, and two other under-23 international teams. In past seasons Canada\u2019s roster has been largely low-major players as well as Canadian university players (USPORTS) but this year they flipped the script entirely and had a roster of all D1 talent, with many of those players being the top shelf of Canadian talent such as Lee.
This year, team USA\/NCAA was represented by Georgetown, a team expected to be strong in the Big East. They were joined by Brazil and Japan. Before getting into how Lee performed, I\u2019ll set the stage by telling you how Canada\u2019s bizarre tournament went.\n<\/p>\n
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As you can probably imagine, with this being somewhat of a joint venture between Canada Basketball (the event takes place in Canada every year) and the NCAA or the member institutions that join, these two are always expected to perform well. The format is a simple round robin, with the top two teams playing in a gold medal match. Well, things didn\u2019t exactly go to plan.
Canada opened against Brazil and lost, with the Brazilians dominating defensively on their way to a 85-78 win. This set up what Canada thought was a must-win game with Georgetown, which was going to be no easy feat. However, they dug deep and won 65-62, and they thought that it was going to get into some kind of a point differential situation in their game against Japan where they could win by a lot and come in second to play in the gold medal match\u2013so long as USA beat Brazil.
Here is where things got crazy. Brazil was able to figure out even if they didn\u2019t beat the USA, so long as they lost by MORE than 2 but less than 13\u2013they would advance, due to Tournament rules capping the winning margin\u2013something that came into play with USA, Brazil, and eventually Canada blowing out Japan. This is what set up a crazy play. In the final seconds of play it was a tie game when Brazil fouled USA, sending them to the line. The shooter made the first one, putting USA up by 1. Then, on the second shot, a Brazilian player intentionally went and slapped the ball away committing an intentional goaltend\u2013ensuring the shot would count and USA would be up by two. They then took a long three at the buzzer to go for the win, but it missed. Even though Brazil lost\u2013they ensured a berth in the gold medal game.
Canada didn\u2019t realize this and thought they would be able to beat Japan by about 34 points which they thought would advance them by point differential. However, during warmups, Canada received clarity that no matter what happened they would not advance. This rattled the team who ended up having a slow start against Japan, though they were able to ultimately win by 15. It was a disappointing showing for Canada to finish third, but they still were 2-1 with a win over Georgetown. Now, onto how Lee played.\n<\/p>\n
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Versus Brazil:
32 Minutes\n<\/p>\n
16 Points\n<\/p>\n
9 Assists\n<\/p>\n
6 Rebounds\n<\/p>\n
2 Turnovers\n<\/p>\n
5-10 Field Goal\n<\/p>\n
3-7 Three-Point
+1\n<\/p>\n
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Versus Georgetown:
36 Minutes\n<\/p>\n
11 Points\n<\/p>\n
7 Assists\n<\/p>\n
3 Rebounds\n<\/p>\n
1 Turnover
2 Steals\n<\/p>\n
4-9 Field Goal\n<\/p>\n
2-7 Three-Point\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Versus Japan:\n<\/p>\n
\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
32 Minutes
16 Points\n<\/p>\n
6 Assists
8 Rebounds\n<\/p>\n
3 Turnovers\n<\/p>\n
1 Steal\n<\/p>\n
6-13 Field Goal
2-5 Three-Point
As you can tell by the minute load\u2013Lee was an incredibly important player for Canada and was arguably the best player on a team that had a number of proven high-major players. Sometimes in these small tournaments where teams are somewhat thrown together (Canada was only able to have three practices) you don\u2019t get an accurate look at players, but Lee demonstrated the exact type of talent that he was at Princeton. The first thing that stuck out was Lee\u2019s passing as he was looking for his teammates any time he got a step on his primary defender. Lee particularly liked hunting for the skip pass to create open corner threes for his teammates, and he easily could have had more assists than he did (which was already a lot) if more shots fell. You would like to see Lee try to be more aggressive as a scorer at times when he does get into the paint, as he would often get downhill looking to pass as opposed to finish at the rim\u2013an area he did struggle at while at Princeton, and something that was shown at the Global Jam where he missed a few bunnies.
As could be expected, a major strength for Lee was the three-point shot. He finished 7-19 from deep which isn\u2019t otherworldly or anything\u2013but it\u2019s a sustainable mark and suggests the kinds of shooting games you\u2019ll see at Florida, where I\u2019d bet he has a few three game stretches that look exactly like what we just saw. The kind of threes he was hitting is important to note here as well, as he was hitting some of his typical tough ones off the bounce but also was able to get some chances off of screens where he found the bottom of the net.
As was the case at Princeton, an issue facing Lee is his defense. While he doesn\u2019t lack effort or toughness on that side of the floor he just isn\u2019t particularly quick laterally, and his long limbs seem to be slow to respond with every dribble. Even though he was locked in on the defensive end and was fighting hard to stay with his check he had trouble navigating ball screens and it felt like he ran into a wall every time a pick was set. This will be a big area to watch for Lee as he looks to grow into a top SEC guard.
Overall it was a great showing for Lee and one that he\u2019ll be extremely proud of, despite the fact it was ultimately a disappointing showing for Canada. The fact he was able to play a ton of minutes in three games will also be good for his offseason conditioning, and he\u2019ll get back to Gainesville ready to ramp up for the college basketball season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Xaivian Lee got into some live action this past week as he competed for Canada in the Global…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":89886,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-89885","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89885\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89886"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}