The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
NBA coaches wondering about Olympic plans
Golden State coach Steve Kerr was supposed to be in Tokyo for the Olympics this summer. And now he’s supposed to be there for the rescheduled version next summer.
Then again, Kerr isn’t certain if he — or anyone else from the NBA — will be there at all.
With the next NBA season not expected to start until at least Dec. 1, that calls into some serious question whether that could overlap with Olympic qualifying tournaments that some nations will need to endure in June 2021 and the Tokyo Games themselves the following month. And Kerr, who is slated to be an assistant under San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich for USA Basketball in Tokyo, said Tuesday that he doesn’t have any idea how the schedule will work.
“Believe it or not, I haven’t had a single conversation with Pop about that,” Kerr said. “And the reason is because we don’t know. We’ve been talking almost daily now for the last couple of weeks and before that we were speaking once every few weeks. So, we haven’t even had a single conversation because there’s nothing to report.”
The U.S. is among eight teams who have already qualified for the 12-team men’s tournament at the Tokyo Olympics, which were pushed back a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. The Americans had a ton of interest from top NBA stars for this summer; now with things delayed a year, USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo has said he and Popovich will wait until the NBA schedule plans for 2020-21 become certain before mapping out an exact plan to build the roster.
FIBA pushed back the dates for the four remaining qualifying tournaments to June 29 through July 4, 2021, meaning they would end 19 days before the rescheduled start of the delayed Tokyo Olympics. There will be four different six-team, winner-goes-tothe-Olympics tournaments hosted by Canada, Croatia, Lithuania and Serbia.
Toronto coach Nick Nurse is scheduled to coach Canada in that qualifying tournament and, he hopes, the Olympics.