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Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has led Team USA since 2017.
(AP) – Game 7 of the 2021 NBA Finals, from now on, would be played on July 22.
The opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics, from now on, would be the next day.
And when presented to this potential programming conundrum, San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich, who will coach the US men’s national basketball team at the next Olympics, came up with a very quick and very lighthearted solution. .
“I don’t think we’re going to let the finals be seven games,” Popovich said.
Joking aside, Popovich knows that the NBA schedule and how it gets very close to the start of the rescheduled Tokyo Games will be a challenge for USA Basketball to navigate next year by choosing the 12 players who will attempt to win a fourth. consecutive men’s olympic. gold medal.
Popovich will be the head coach of the Olympic team for the first time, succeeding Duke’s coach, Mike Krzyzewski.
“The Olympics are always on my mind, just like Coach K told me they would be,” Popovich said Tuesday. “You cannot escape from that. So this scenario, as it stands now, seems problematic in the sense that the organization and determination of who will be part of the team has yet to be determined. “
There is a plan. As with everything else in a world with coronavirus, it is tentative, but there is a plan.
The pool of finalists, if the past form holds, will be around 40 or 50 names, will be revealed by USA Basketball sometime in early 2021, the first step in what the Americans hope will be a somewhat normal sequence of events before. of the Tokyo Games.
The 2016 Olympic team was chosen about six weeks before the start of the Rio Games, allowing time for a training camp and exhibitions before heading to Brazil. If the same schedule is kept next year, and assuming the NBA schedule is not changed along the way, the US Olympic team could be chosen in mid to late June, towards the end of the second round. of the NBA playoffs.
“We know there are a lot of variables,” said Sean Ford, USA Basketball men’s national team manager. “We are going to talk to as many organizations as we can, to try to find a way to include as many NBA players on our final roster as possible.”
Many elite NBA players like LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Draymond Green, Devin Booker, James Harden, and more said that entering last season they were interested in playing in the Tokyo Games. That, of course, was months before the coronavirus hit and changed so much.
The complexities are not just limited to American players.
Many international players, like two-time Milwaukee MVP, Greece’s Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Serbia’s Nikola Jokic of Denver, have said they’d like to play, but their nations have yet to qualify next summer just to get to Tokyo and those rounds of classification will take place. during the NBA playoffs. Toronto coach Nick Nurse is scheduled to coach Canada in their qualifying efforts; he, too, may face a scheduling conflict if the Raptors make it back to the playoffs.
Popovich seemed confident that the United States is more than capable of figuring things out.
“The timing makes everything difficult,” Popovich said. “And it will take real soul searching and innovative thinking to build the best possible team.”
