Executive role may be in Nash’s future
Two- time NBA MVP Steve Nash will likely take the same type of executive director role with Canada Basketball that the retired Wayne Gretzky assumed with Hockey Canada in the lead- up to the 2002 Olympics.
Wayne Parrish, Canada Basketball’s president/ CEO, said Tuesday that he’s had conversations with the Victoriaraised Nash, who is still playing at a high level at age 38, about being an “overseer or executive director” for the national senior men’s team as it points toward the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.
“I very much hope that there’ll be a day, somewhere down the road, where we’ll be able to tap Steve on the shoulder and he’ll be at a time in his life and his career where it makes sense for him,” said Parrish.
Canada has failed to qualify for the last three Olympics. But a new wave of homegrown young talent, led by 2011 first- round NBA draft picks Tristan Thompson and Cory Joseph, is creating a high degree of optimism about Canada’s prospects for not only qualifying for the Olympics beyond London, but being medal contenders.
“[ Nash’s involvement] would be a tremendous thing for the sport in Canada, a tremendous thing for our success internationally as we count down to Rio in 2016 and 2020,” said Parrish. “I feel pretty good thinking Steve will in some way be part of the mix as we move forward.”
Parrish said Nash, who played for the national team for a few years in his 20s, including at the 2000 Olympics, “very much has Canada tattooed across his chest” and is interested in returning to the program.
“I can’t say when it will be ... [ but] I believe that will happen.”
An unsourced report in the Toronto Sun on Monday suggested an announcement on Nash’s role could come as early as next month. The same report also said that Jay Triano, the former SFU hoops star and a onetime coach with the national team and the NBA’S Toronto Raptors, will return as coach.
Triano and Nash, strong supporters of each other, and seven other people are part of what Canada Basketball calls its council of excellence.
Parrish said he’d love to have Triano, who is under contract with USA Basketball as an assistant coach through the London Olympics in August, “aligned more directly in the program than he is now.”
But he noted that there is no urgency to hire a head coach given that there is no FIBA competition for the senior men’s team until world championship qualifying in the summer of 2013.
He said the federation is doing a thorough review of its structure and funding model. While Canada Basketball has two major sponsors in Bell and Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, Parrish said the budgets for many of the senior men’s teams going to the London Olympics this summer are larger than the combined yearly budgets for all eight of the federation’s teams. Additional sponsors will only come on board, he said, if there is sustained success, something he believes will happen with the “trajectory and development of our young guys.”
Parrish said the federation is considering creating one or more full- time positions. Former coach Leo Rautins, who resigned last September after Canada bomb at the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifying tournament, continues to work as a broadcaster, while former managing director Maurizio Gherardini is the Raptors’ vice- president and assistant GM.
Parrish said one of the interesting things that has happened over the last few months is the interest shown in Canada Basketball from people in the U. S. and overseas.
“People who have reached out to us. That’s a function of the calibre of athletes that we have in the pipeline right now. People are looking at the crop of young talent in the NBA and what’s coming up through the college ranks and going ‘ Oh my God, there’s a real opportunity there.’ ”