MEXICO CITY

Canada might have at least three times more NBA players than any other team at the FIBA Americas tournament, but you don’t win games just by looking impressive on paper.

While Argentina is obviously led by Toronto Raptors forward Luis Scola and long-time NBAer Andres Nocioni, the team also has a number of other excellent players, most notably point guards Facundo Campazzo and Nicolas Laprovittola.

Both torched Canada in Tuesday’s win, Campazzo shooting 4-for-5 for 10 points, with six assists and two steals and Laprovittola stepping up with 20 points and four assists.

Laprovittola, in particular, caught Canada’s attention.

“It’s probably a good wake-up call for us, that this happened now,” Canadian guard Brady Heslip said afterward.

“The guys that haven’t been down here before, they’ll see there are not going to be any easy games. Every team has a guy like (Laprovittola) — these guys have never heard of him, he’s not a NBA player, but he’s a high-level player. He’s very good and very effective,” Heslip said.

No doubt about that.

Even when Canada finally started double-teaming Scola later in the game, Laprovittola went off and that was about that.

THE MAN

Of course Scola was the real difference-maker in this one, as he usually is in FIBA competitions.

But he had a little extra incentive, saying his family had just moved to Toronto yesterday, in advance of the NBA season, his first with the Raptors, and were watching on television.

Afterward, Scola sounded happy to send a message.

“Nobody is invincible, Canada is not invincible, we proved that today,” Scola told TSN.ca.

“But they’re still contenders, nothing’s changed.”

Scola said Argentina’s experience was crucial on Tuesday.

“I believe experience is a big part of this tournament because there’s a lot of different things that the younger players aren’t really used to,” he said.

“There’s a mix of styles and rules, so there’s a lot of confusion a lot of times. And when you play in a lot of these tournaments you kind of take a little bit of advantage. You know what’s going to happen, you know how the refs are going to call, you know the other team.”

NEED A GO-TO GUY

Simply put, Canada needs to establish Andrew Wiggins as its go-to scorer.

The team looked lost down the stretch on Tuesday, while Argentina confidently worked through Nocioni or let its point guards work.

Afterward, Triano bobbed and weaved a bit when asked if he needs to get more out of Wiggins and Anthony Bennett.

“We’ve been playing quite a few players. We know that this is a long tournament and we’re going to stick to our strategy,” Triano said.

“They’ve been two of our best players in the first four games we played. Anthony’s been a great player for us all summer, whether it’s the Pan Am Games or the games in Puerto Rico so we expect him to bounce back and we expect all of our players to play better. I didn’t think we were very good as a team, I don’t think I can single out one or two guys.”

And he didn’t need to. Both Wiggins and Bennett scored team-highs of 13 points and shot the two highest percentages on the squad from the field. But the point is, they are two players who need to take charge offensively because they can. Wiggins in particular. He attempted nine shots, only one more than backup point guard Phil Scrubb and four fewer than Kelly Olynyk.

AROUND THE RIM

Heslip shot 3-for-4 from three-point range. The rest of the team was 3-for-16 ... Cory Joseph picked up two early fouls, which limited his playing time. “It happens. FIBA you only get five and I picked up two early ones; it happens. You can’t complain, you just have to go out there and play,” Joseph said ... Heslip on what went wrong: “I think that everyone came out of the gates a little tentative. We were supposed to be the aggressors and dictate how we wanted them to play,” Heslip said. “From the get-go, they got the ball where they wanted to, to who they wanted to. It was more of a physical game, and that’s not what we wanted. There are no excuses. They played a great game. They did everything they were supposed to do. We just need to be the aggressors and aggressive and play loose and not uptight right from the jump. We would have been better off.”