Canada hoping its NBA talent commits
Summer tourney lineups uncertain
To hear Jay Triano tell it, the Canadian men’s national basketball team has not yet entered the courtship phase with the NBA players it hopes to have representing the country in what should be the biggest summer for the team since the Sydney Olympics.
The team is a long way from courtship, actually.
Triano, the head coach of the national team who was brought back to the program by general manager Steve Nash, the star of that Sydney team in 2000, was speaking to reporters on Wednesday after the draw for the FIBA Americas Championship, an Olympic qualifier. He was asked about the availability of players such as Andrew Wiggins, Tyler Ennis, and the rest of the bumper crop of recent NBA draft picks for not just the FIBA tournament in August, but for the Pan American Games in Toronto in July.
In response, the coach was decidedly non-committal. For the FIBA tournament in Mexico, he said, he expected to have everyone available. For the Pan Ams, despite the competition being on home soil — the home city for some — the roster makeup currently involves a lot of guessing. Rookies such as Ennis and Nik Stauskas might be sent to the NBA summer league, which is also in July.
Veterans like Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph will be restricted free agents when the season ends; their contracts might not be worked out before the Pan Ams begin.
“Our goal is to have as much of the team as possible for the Pan Ams,” Triano said. This echoes what Nash said in a visit to Toronto last month: that management wanted to have Canada’s young core playing as many games as possible together leading into the chase for an Olympic spot at the FIBA tournament in Monterrey.
But Triano said, almost offhand, that there was still a “long way” to go, for example, in the recruitment of Wiggins, the first overall draft pick last spring who is playing his way toward the NBA’s rookie-of-the-year award with the Minnesota Timberwolves. Asked to clarify what that meant, Triano said the middle of an NBA season simply isn’t the time to start asking professional franchises if you can borrow their prized assets for a few weeks in the summer — particularly when that request is for those players to spending most of their offseason competing in two tournaments.
The Canadian coach said he expected to speak with Timberwolves officials once their season ends — conveniently, it will not include the playoffs — and develop a plan for the 20-yearold shooting guard that will satisfy both the Wolves and Canada Basketball.
That sounds several steps short of a confident assertion that Wiggins will play for Canada this summer, but Triano said he just hadn’t had the required discussions with Minnesota executives yet.
The plan, he said, especially for the FIBA Americas tournament, is that “we will be able to move forward with the guys we want.”
It is quite a bunch of guys. Canada could sport an entire roster of NBA players, from Wiggins and Minnesota teammate Anthony Bennett, the last two No. 1 overall draft picks, to Joseph, Thompson, Boston’s Kelly Olynyk, Orlando’s Andrew Nicholson, and on and on. The depth of NBA talent is all the more notable when compared to other international rosters that are not the United States. At the 2012 Olympics, Spain had five NBA players and France had six. Argentina and Brazil had four. Canada should have 12, unless a national team veteran like Andy Rautins, currently playing in Italy, beats an NBA player out for a roster spot.
“We think that the depth and athleticism that we have can hopefully wear teams down,” Triano said Wednesday.
There will be 10 teams at the FIBA Americas, with Canada drawn on Wednesday into a group that includes Argentina, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and Cuba. The other side of the draw has Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Paraguay and the Dominican Republic. The two finalists will get Olympic berths, although Brazil already has one as the host country, so it’s more like the top two non-Brazil teams will advance to Rio. Three more teams will move on to an Olympic play-in tournament that will be held next year in the summer.
Argentina would appear to be the biggest obstacle for Canada in the FIBA tournament, although its roster is unclear, too. Manu Ginobili and Luis Scola, national stalwarts, may not play this summer.
“We really don’t know,” Triano said. “We’ve heard rumours that their guys are going to play, and also that they are not going to play. Everyone’s in the same boat.”
There is that, yes. It’s just that in Canada’s case, the national team should be on its way to becoming a world power. The more bodies that are part of the team this summer, the more likely that happens. This is, after all, why Nash took the GM job while he was still an NBA player: because he wanted to make sure that the program benefited from his presence heading into a crucial stretch when it is loaded with young talent.
“Everyone is interested,” Triano said. “Everyone talks about their interest (in the national team).”
For now, that will have to do.