Kane Pitman
Jul 31, 2024, 08:05 AM
LILLE, FRANCE -- Canada came in with a clear plan to implement it and Australia a plan to avoid it.
Yet, by the time the final buzzer sounded, 'The Dorture Chamber' had claimed another victim.
"He is extremely physical, if you're bringing the ball up the floor, you don't want to face that guy," Canada head coach Jordi Fernandez said postgame.
The Canadian straight jacket Luguentz Dort's target on this day? Patty Mills.
Mills only concedes around 4cm in height to Dort, though on the scales the difference is around 20 kilos. Despite his hulking cinder block like figure, Dort is an athletic beast, and he attached himself to the hip of Mills early in the game with the sole task of eliminating the impact of the Boomers' No. 1 bucket getter.
"He does a great job moving off the ball. That's his strength, he's always going to find a way to get a shot up," Dort told ESPN.
"He's taking a lot of tough shots that he makes. He's been a great player for a long time for a reason. Trying to make it tough on him and make him make a lot of tough shots."
Whoever Canada decided to assign Dort, Brian Goorjian and the Boomers coaching staff already understood they were going to have a problem.
By the half, Mills was just 2-for-6 from the floor, with his lone vintage moment of trademark craft coming with 3:54 to play in the second period. Mills curled around a screen at full speed, stopping on a dime, drawing contact and three attempts from the charity stripe.
The defender who committed the foul was not Dort, however. He had walked to the bench 26 seconds earlier, with his replacement Jamal Murray picking up the personal.
While Mills wasn't necessarily exploding from a scoring perspective, the Boomers led the game 49-45 through two quarters and found plenty of ways to function offensively as their veteran scorer darted around in the half court, often without touching the ball.
"What we were trying to do is keep the ball away from him," Goorjian said in relation to Dort.
While Mills was working without a lot of reward, Canada was satisfied with the results, identifying the 36-year-old as the man they needed to shut down.
"We knew that Patty creates a lot of attention with all his movement. He's just showing in all the preparation, he looks like 25-year-old, Patty. It's impressive how good he is," Fernandez explained.
"We were concerned. He moves, he creates a lot of help, and they do a great job with their slips and creating ball movement."
Early in the third quarter, Dort's teammates joined the defensive party.
Dillon Brooks and RJ Barrett became difference makers, while Dort pivoted between Mills and Josh Giddey, who had 15 points in the first half to comfortably be the best player on the floor.
As the Australian offence faulted, the Canadian defence ratcheted up the intensity. The Boomers committed nine turnovers, conceding 15 points off those giveaways in a game changing period.
"We were not playing great defensively in that first half. We allow 30 points in the paint, some of their players were really comfortable," Fernandez said. "We came back in the second half, 22 deflections, only 16 points in the paint. That ignited our offence, the way we can run off their turnovers.
"I wasn't happy with our physicality in the first half, we've just got to put four quarters together. There are a lot of imperfections in the game of basketball, you just have to work through it. We have a lot of players helping the team. That's how you have to be."
Two moments of physicality in very different forms summed up the second half and Dort's presence.
With the shot clock dark and time winding down in the third, Giddey found himself on the right wing with Dort his primary matchup. As Mills flew by for a potential hand off, Giddey raised the ball above his head to a usual safe space.
Rather than let the clock run, Dort stepped up, jumped into the air and ripped the ball out of Giddey's hands clean in an incredible individual defensive play. Dort would dunk down the other end to rubber stamp the moment.
Then, with 5:21 to run in the fourth and the Boomers trailing by six points, Giddey brought the ball across the timeline with Dort in close attention. With each possession of an absolute critical nature, Mills set a physical screen on Dort, sending him to the floor, being whistled for an offensive foul in the process.
RJ Barrett would drill a three from the left corner on the next play, extending the lead to nine in what felt like the first of multiple daggers down the stretch.
Perhaps Mills laid the shoulder into Dort out of frustration. Perhaps it was out of sympathy for Giddey now being the target of his former Oklahoma City Thunder teammate's attention.
Either way, it felt like the final exclamation mark on a job completed to perfection.
"I think Lu just took the assignment and he executed. He's going to keep doing it, he will. That's one of the reasons why we played so well defensively," Fernandez explained.
Mills finished the night with just eight points on 2-for-10 shooting. Going scoreless in the second half on a tough and physical night for the longtime star of the program.
There is only one Lu Dort, but it is a stark reminder that the rest of the world is still on high alert for the veteran's importance to Australia.
Equally, the Boomers still may need some vintage Patty in these games that are won on the barest of margins in a stacked Olympic field.
