Wall has participated in camps for Team USA, but has never represented them on the Olympic stage. In fact, the Wizards/Bullets franchise has never had an active player on the Olympic roster. “Definitely,” Wall told Marc Spears when asked if he was interested. “When you put that Red, White and Blue on, you’re representing your country. It doesn’t matter if ‘Wall’ is on the back or whatever name is on the back, I want to represent my country. I know how much this country means to me and I would definitely love to have an opportunity to play for it.”
USA Basketball Rumors
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.”
But one way the NBA could alleviate the potential for an Olympic problem is to get away from the player-friendlier scheduling models used in recent seasons that greatly lowered back-to-backs and eliminated the dreaded stretches of four games in five nights. If the league did that, it could buy some time and possibly make the Olympics fit on some player and coach schedules. “They’ve talked to us on our team calls that it might be a condensed schedule next year, more so than in the past,” said Atlanta general manager Travis Schlenk, whose coach — Lloyd Pierce — is also scheduled to be a USA Basketball assistant next summer along with Kerr and Villanova’s Jay Wright.
ESPN’s recently aired documentary series “The Last Dance,” chronicling Michael Jordan’s final championship season with the Chicago Bulls, rekindled interest in Jordan’s long-running feud with Isiah Thomas, including how the Pistons’ star was left off the 1992 Dream Team that won Olympic gold in Barcelona. Author Jack McCallum addressed the controversy in the most recent episode of his “The Dream Team Tapes” podcast series. McCallum said Jordan brought up the issue of Thomas himself in a 2011 interview. “When they called me and asked me to play — Rod Thorn called me. I said ‘Rod, I won’t play if Isiah Thomas is on the team.’ He assured me. He said, ‘Chuck doesn’t want Isiah. So, Isiah is not going to be part of the team,’” Jordan said on the recording that McCallum played during the podcast.
A one-on-one conversation between ESPN NBA analyst Doris Burke and Golden State Warriors star Stephen Curry is worth the price of admission. Except this time, the cost is free, with the Jr. NBA’s Leadership Conference on May 15 going virtual during the global coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. For the previous three years, the Jr. NBA Leadership Conference was held in Chicago at the same time as the NBA’s draft combine. It allowed key participants, such as the NBA, USA Basketball, NCAA, state high school sports federations and other organizations, including the Boys and Girls Club and YMCA, to gather and address important issues and opportunities in youth basketball. But it was impossible to hold the event in-person this year.
Burke, who was diagnosed with COVID-19, will talk with Curry, whose charitable foundation is helping people affected by the pandemic. The event will conclude with a basketball clinic featuring drills and exercises boys and girls can do at home in limited spaces. “The effort around NBA Together really served as the underpinning, and it made it clear to us how important it is to deepen connections during these times,” NBA senior vice president and head of youth development David Krichavsky said.
Butler indicated he’s not interested in playing for the USA Basketball national team at this stage of his career. The Heat duo of Bam Adebayo and Butler were named among the preliminary finalists to make the Team USA 12-man roster for the 2020 Olympics, which have been rescheduled for 2021 because of the pandemic. Butler won gold with Team USA in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. “I told [Carmelo Anthony] that if he plays [in the Olympics], I play,” Butler joked during the Instagram Live interview. “Melo said that he’s not playing.”
Since Thomas, then one of the most accomplished players in the NBA, was left off the Dream Team in 1992, it’s largely been attributed to his poor relationships with some of the players who made the roster, namely Jordan. In Episode 5, Jordan says when he asked Rod Thorn, then the head of USA Basketball, who was playing, Thorn told him, “The guy you’re talking about, who you’re thinking about, he’s not gonna be playing.”
Dwyane Wade Edits: @DwyaneWade says they are working on releasing a Documentary on the “Redeem Team”, aka the 2008 Olympic team. This is gonna be dope.
Jay Busbee: Robert Edward Auctions has a game-worn, signed Michael Jordan Dream Team Jersey up for bid. Starting price: $25,000. Your kids don’t REALLY need college, now do they?
Around AU$5 million (US$3.08 million) will be refunded to spectators of last year’s Boomers vs. Team USA two-game series at Melbourne’s Marvel Stadium after the Australian consumer watchdog found that promoter TEG Live made false claims about its seating plan.
The 20,000 refunds will be paid out to those who purchased floor-level seating for the games. Despite a mock-up depicting tiered seating, the seats used were in flat rows, lower than the court and, in some cases, more than 30 metres from the action. “Consumers paid a premium for floor-level seats, ranging between $895 and $3,995 for a hospitality package, and may have done so as a result of misleading seating advertising,” said Rod Sims, chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. “In our view, TEG Live’s conduct was unacceptable.”
TEG Live’s statement echoed Sims’ comments. “We acknowledge some fans were disappointed that the USA Men’s Basketball team that competed in Australia in August did not include some of the NBA’s biggest stars,” it read. “Based on the information provided to TEG Live by USA Basketball, we had expected these stars to play.”
“He wanted to in the worst way,” said Colangelo, who was the managing director of USA Basketball Men’s Senior National Team program at the time. “I put him on by saying, ‘Look, we may want you to do something else rather than score. We may need you to be the distributor’ and he kind of looked at me funny and we smiled and he said, ‘I’ll do whatever you want. I just want to be part of it.'” This was coming off the 2004 U.S. Olympic team winning just a bronze medal.
“We go to training camp in Vegas and he’s there two days early and is in the workout room at 5:30 in the morning working on his weights,” Colangelo recalls. “If you practice twice a day, that was his first workout before the two regular workouts. As players like Carmelo and LeBron, Wade and (Chris) Bosh and others, they saw that and they started going in that early. So he led by example.” Case in point. “The first day of scrimmage, he’s diving on the floor for a loose ball,” Colangelo said. Bryant scored 20 points in the 118-107 gold medal victory over Spain in Beijing, hitting clutch shots in the fourth quarter. “Had it not been for Wade and in particular, Kobe’s late-game heroics, we may not have won,” Colangelo said. “Spain played that well against us.”
Legal experts warned of a Pandora’s Box of messy legal challenges from athletes in the lead-up to the Games, as sporting bodies consider tweaks to qualifying criteria that could impact who gets in and who misses out. “I’m sure there will be additions/subtractions,” said USA Basketball chief communications officer Craig Miller about the names on America’s ‘Dream Team’ list. “For example, I could see Zion Williamson being considered if he stays healthy and continues his strong play,” he said of the first overall pick in the 2019 National Basketball Association draft who plays for the New Orleans Pelicans.
The Tokyo Olympics are officially postponed until 2021, but Team USA’s leadership is recommitting itself to stay in the job. USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo and head coach Gregg Popovich remain committed to the team into 2021, Colangelo said Tuesday. Both men’s futures in their roles had been uncertain after this summer.
“The commitments everyone made for 2020 are still there; we’re all-in and we’re committed,” Colangelo said. “It’s important to deal with the unknowns and this virus. This too shall pass and we’ll be back for everyone’s well-being.”
FIBA Olympic Tournaments draw postponed
FIBA media: Following the latest developments with the COVID-19 pandemic, the Draw for the @Tokyo2020 Men’s & Women’s Olympic Basketball Tournaments, which was set to take place at the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball in Mies, 🇨🇭 on March 20, is postponed to a date yet to be confirmed.
Marc J. Spears: The USA Basketball Board of Directors announced that in response to the COVID-19 pandemic it has suspended all USA Basketball scheduled events until further notice and that it was cancelling the 2020 Nike Hoop Summit that was scheduled for April 10 in Portland.
Chris Mannix: USA Basketball Managing Director Jerry Colangelo tells @SInow that USA Basketball operations are proceeding normally. No withdrawals by players concerned about #coronavirus — yet — and there has been no communication about postponing or canceling the Games.
Chris Mannix: Colangelo, like most, is anxious to see how everything plays out. But he tells @SInow that it’s “all systems go” at USAB, with plans in place to have a team selected in early June.
Colangelo is still powerful in the NBA as the director of USA basketball and chairman of the Basketball Hall of Fame. On Friday, he endorsed two Team USA coaches — Jeff Van Gundy and Tom Thibodeau — for the Knicks job. “Those are great basketball guys. They’re terrific coaches. I have great respect for both of them,” Colangelo said. “They’re different. They’re alike in some ways. But they’re born to coach. And the fact that they’re not — there are teams out there that could use those guys, for sure.”
Featuring 11 players currently active in the NBA G League and including eight players owning NBA regular season experience, USA Basketball today announced the 12-man roster for the February 2020 USA AmeriCup Qualifying Team.
Confirmed for the team are: Jaylen Adams (Wisconsin Herd/St. Bonaventure); Justin Anderson (Long Island Nets/Virginia); Cody Demps (Stockton Kings/ Sacramento State); Kyle Fogg (Beijing Royal Fighters, China/Arizona); Abdul Gaddy (Oklahoma City Blue/Washington); Devon Hall (Oklahoma City Blue/Virginia); Jalen Jones (Capital City Go-Go/Texas A&M); J.P. Macura (Canton Charge/Xavier); Eric Mika (Stockton Kings/Brigham Young); Ivan Rabb(Westchester Knicks/California) Levi Randolph (Canton Charge/Alabama); and James Webb (Iowa Wolves/Boise State).
LeBron non-committal on 2020 Olympics
Ben Golliver: Lakers’ LeBron James on whether he will play for USA Basketball at 2020 Tokyo Olympics: “[I’ll weigh] how my body is feeling… I’m hoping to make a long playoff run. Then where my mind is and where my family’s head is. There’s a lot of factors but my name is in the hat.” pic.twitter.com/DfBB21Z4Hp
Melissa Rohlin: Dwight Howard on Olympics: ” For my agent to call me and say, hey, would you like to be on the Olympic Team again? At first, I thought it was a dream. After I guess over 10 years, 2008, to be asked to play in the Olympics again. There was no way I was going to say no for that.”
Melissa Rohlin: Dwight Howard: “I carried around my gold medal for almost four, five years after we won it the first time. Everywhere I went. On the road, even during the season I took it with me and I’d just look at it everyday like, man, this is amazing that I got a gold medal.”
Kyle Goon: JaVale McGee said his desire to play on the Olympic team stems with an ongoing friendly rivalry between him and his mother, Pam McGee: “She’s won a WNBA championship, I’ve won an NBA championship. So I’ll be able to catch her if I win a gold medal, because she’s won one.”
Bill Oram: Of the 44 players named finalists for the men’s Olympic team, five are Lakers: James, Davis, Kuzma plus… JaVale McGee and Dwight Howard
USA Basketball announced the preliminary roster for the 2020 Olympics which consists of 44 names. The list is as follows: Bam Adebayo (Miami Heat); LaMarcus Aldridge (San Antonio Spurs); Harrison Barnes (Sacramento Kings); Bradley Beal (Washington Wizards); Devin Booker (Phoenix Suns); Malcolm Brogdon (Indiana Pacers); Jaylen Brown (Boston Celtics); Jimmy Butler (Miami Heat); Mike Conley (Utah Jazz); Stephen Curry (Golden State Warriors); Anthony Davis (Los Angeles Lakers); DeMar DeRozan (San Antonio Spurs); Andre Drummond (Cleveland Cavaliers); Kevin Durant (Brooklyn Nets); Paul George (L.A. Clippers); Draymond Green (Golden State Warriors); James Harden (Houston Rockets); Montrezl Harrell (L.A. Clippers); Joe Harris (Brooklyn Nets); Tobias Harris (Philadelphia 76ers); Gordon Hayward (Boston Celtics); Dwight Howard (Los Angeles Lakers); Brandon Ingram (New Orleans Pelicans); Kyrie Irving (Brooklyn Nets); LeBron James (Los Angeles Lakers); Kyle Kuzma (Los Angeles Lakers); (cont.).
Kawhi Leonard (L.A. Clippers); Damian Lillard (Portland Trail Blazers); Brook Lopez (Milwaukee Bucks); Kevin Love (Cleveland Cavaliers); Kyle Lowry (Toronto Raptors); JaVale McGee (Los Angeles Lakers); Khris Middleton (Milwaukee Bucks); Donovan Mitchell (Utah Jazz); Victor Oladipo (Indiana Pacers); Chris Paul (Oklahoma City Thunder); Mason Plumlee (Denver Nuggets); Marcus Smart (Boston Celtics); Jayson Tatum (Boston Celtics); Klay Thompson (Golden State Warriors); Myles Turner (Indiana Pacers); Kemba Walker (Boston Celtics); Russell Westbrook (Houston Rockets); and Derrick White (San Antonio Spurs).
USA Basketball released a preliminary roster on Monday of 44 names to be considered for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics, and while LeBron James and Steph Curry are back in the fold for the national team, the list had some glaring omissions. Notably, players like Trae Young, Zach LaVine, Carmelo Anthony, Zion Williamson, Ja Morant and John Collins were left off the list entirely while Kyle Kuzma, Dwight Howard, Marcus Smart and Derrick White were among the 44 players to receive camp invitations.
Marc Stein: As @usabasketball chairman Jerry Colangelo told @NYTSports last month, this preliminary roster features virtually every top American name available — with the 12 players who will ultimately go Tokyo to be selected and announced in June before the NBA playoffs are complete
Jonathan Feigen: USA Basketball releases list of 44 players on the preliminary Olympic men’s basketball roster, which includes Rockets guards Russell Westbrook and James Harden.
Brian Robb: Celtics have their five best players (Jaylen Brown, Gordon Hayward, Marcus Smart, Jayson Tatum, and Kemba Walker) on the preliminary 44-man USA Olympic roster for 2020 just released by USA Basketball.
John Karalis: USA Basketball statement on the passing of Kobe Bryant
Marc Stein: Program director Jerry Colangelo tells @NYTSports that @usabasketball is planning to announce a preliminary roster for this summer’s 2020 Olympics by month’s end that could approach 40 players. “We’ve had a great response,” Colangelo said
I’ve done some rechecking on the matter and was advised recently that U.S.A.B. officials didn’t see anything resembling this Adebayo during practices in August. It was likewise suggested that Adebayo, deep down, knew he didn’t make a strong enough case to earn a slot. Adebayo wouldn’t go that far when I had a chance to ask him directly over the weekend, but he did acknowledge that losing out to Milwaukee’s Brook Lopez, Indiana’s Myles Turner and Denver’s Mason Plumlee left him with a “bigger chip on my shoulder.”
“Obviously no man wants to get cut, so I take it personally,” Adebayo said after posting the second of those triple-doubles in an overtime win on Saturday night in Dallas. “But it’s behind me now.” Yet Adebayo insisted that “it’s not the reason why I’ve been doing what I’m doing.” Credit Heat Coach Erik Spoelstra for instilling him with the confidence to become an increasingly significant part of Miami’s offense on top of Adebayo’s Draymond Green-like ability to guard all five positions.
USA Basketball named former NBA head coach Mike Fratello as USA’s head coach for the 2021 FIBA AmeriCup Qualifiers. Andy Greer and Othella Harrington will be his assistants. Fratello holds previous experience at the international level with Ukraine between 2011 and 2014. From 1984 to 2006 made it to the playoffs 11 times in 15 full-season attempts with various NBA teams.
Shamet’s season earned him an invite to USA Basketball’s Select Team camp. According to sources, he was told he had a good chance at making the roster and playing a pivotal role on the World Cup team in China. But Shamet had to pull out on August 2 because of a minor muscle contusion in his lower leg, an injury which had been lingering from the postseason. With the stakes of the 2019-20 season even higher than before, Shamet couldn’t risk entering training camp at anything less than 100 percent. “I didn’t feel like it was something I needed to be a tough guy about and push through right now,” Shamet said. “I just think I’m young and, hopefully, if I do what I’m supposed to do, there will be more opportunities for me down the line. I’m kind of betting on myself in that sense.”
Mavericks’ head athletic trainer Dionne Calhoun reached one of his lifelong goals this summer – one that figures to be topped next year. Calhoun was chosen to be on the USA Basketball medical staff for this year’s FIBA World Cup in China and next summer’s Olympic Games in Japan. It’s a two-year commitment that he gladly accepted and that the Mavericks embraced. “It really is a dream come true,” Calhoun said. “It’s something I wanted to do ever since I knew I wanted to (be) in medicine.”
“It was a really great experience,” Calhoun said. “Pop was great. The folks on his staff, Chip Engelland, Ime Udoka, Will Hardy, they were great. Steve Kerr, awesome. Jay Wright from Villanova and Lloyd Pierce, Jeff Van Gundy, P.J. Carleslimo – they were great people, first and foremost, alongside being really talented coaches. “I’ve worked (Tim Grgurich’s) summer camp and the NBA predraft camp and now Team USA. Those are all unique opportunities where you get to spend time with players. You spend a lot of time with them. You’re in the trenches with them. For me, the relationships I’ve built with other players and the other medical staffs, that’s an opportunity you don’t normally get this sport. The experience as a whole is one of those life experiences that you just can’t replace.”
