The 12-man roster for the upcoming Summer Olympics has been finalized by USA Basketball. While the squad lacks a lot of traditional big men, the Americans will have a lot of offensive firepower in Tokyo, with players like Kevin Durant and Damian Lillard among the players Gregg Popovich will lean on to win his fourth gold medal in a row.
The team will go to Las Vegas for a training camp before competing in the Games. That camp will, as is customary, involve going head-to-head with a Select Team comprised primarily of NBA prospects, and USA Basketball named the 17 players who will assist in getting the Olympic team ready to travel on Thursday.
“This USA Select Team continues the legacy established by previous Select teams of helping prepare our USA National Team for the Tokyo Olympic Games,” Jerry Colangelo, the director of USA Basketball, said in a statement. “With all the uncertainty of how many of our Olympic Team members will be available for the USA training camp because of the overlap with the NBA Finals, we chose a USA Select Team consisting of many of the top young NBA players and four players who not only own international experience, but who played recently for USA Basketball in important national team qualifying competitions.If we need to add players to fill out our roster for any of our exhibition games, we feel this USA Select Team has an excellent variety of skilled players to choose from.”
The roster includes a mix of young players who could make it onto the senior team in the future (players like Edwards, Garland, and Haliburton, among others) and older players (Jenkins, Magette, Mathias, Reynolds) who are being rewarded for their contributions to the team’s success in World Cup or AmeriCup qualifiers. Erik Spoelstra will lead the club, with Mark Few and Jamahl Mosley acting as his assistants.
