Top hoops hopefuls head to Canuck camp
When Steve Nash took over as general manager of Canada’s senior men’s basketball team, he vowed to run a first-class operation that players would want to be a part of.
His first chance to impress begins Thursday.
After formally introducing former Raptors head coach Jay Triano in a return engagement as the head coach of the national team, Nash will help oversee a weekend camp comprising more than 20 of the top prep school, university and NBA players who will form the core group aimed at the 2016 Olympics.
It all goes to Nash’s vow when he took over to run a program that has a solid foundation instead of one scrambling each summer to put a team of unfamiliar parts on the court.
“This summer we’re going to try to identify — and it’s still in the works — 30 players that we want to target for Rio and try to get them together and start relationships and rapport and start to be able to help them improve,” Nash said when he took over last spring. Final details of who will be at the camp are being kept under wraps by Canada Basketball officials, but sources say it will include a wide range of promising Canadian talent. It will be much like the American model developed in the mid-2000s in the United States when former Phoenix Suns executive Jerry Colangelo began a process of getting long-term commitments from the top NBA players that ultimately led to 2008 and 2012 Olympic golds and a 2010 world championship. “We’ll explore the American model for sure,” Nash said when he was appointed. “I think they’ve done a phenomenal job under Jerry and obviously I have a great relationship with Jerry so I hopefully can learn a lot from him.” Nash and assistant general man- ager Rowan Barrett, a former national team standout, have been working long and hard behind the scenes to develop relationships with the younger players who will form the nucleus of the team for the next decade. By putting on a first-class camp, and fostering relationships off the court, Nash and Barrett hope to get commitments from the best young players for the next handful of years. Canada will attempt to qualify next summer for the 2014 world championships in Spain — a valuable learning experience for a team likely to comprise young players — before taking dead aim at a topeight finish in the 2016 Olympics. The hiring of Triano — who is expected to name Waterloo’s Greg Francis, Carleton’s Dave Smart and Houston Rocket assistant Kelvin Sampson to his staff Thursday — gives the new group of relatively young players an experienced head coach to work under. Triano was the national team head coach from 1998-2005 and is about to enter his 11th season as an NBA coach when he joins the Portland Trail Blazers staff this season.