Kerr, Nurse among NBA coaches wondering about Olympic plans

Golden State coach Steve Kerr was presupposed to be in Tokyo for the Olympics this summer season. And now he’s presupposed to be there for the rescheduled model subsequent summer season. Then once more, Kerr isn’t sure if he — or anybody else from the NBA — can be there in any respect. With the following NBA season not anticipated to begin till a minimum of Dec. 1, that calls into some critical query whether or not that might overlap with Olympic qualifying tournaments that some nations might want to endure in June 2021 and the Tokyo Games themselves the next month.

And Kerr, who’s slated to be an assistant underneath San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich for USA Basketball in Tokyo, stated Tuesday that he doesn’t have any thought how the schedule will work.

“Believe it or not, I haven’t had a single conversation with Pop about that,” Kerr stated.

“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.”

The US is amongst eight groups who’ve already certified for the 12-team males’s event on the Tokyo Olympics, which had been pushed again a 12 months due to the coronavirus pandemic. The Americans had a ton of curiosity from high NBA stars for this summer season; now with issues delayed a 12 months, USA Basketball managing director Jerry Colangelo has stated he and Popovich will wait till the NBA schedule plans for 2020-21 turn out to be sure earlier than mapping out a precise plan to construct the roster.

FIBA pushed again the dates for the 4 remaining qualifying tournaments to June 29 by July 4, 2021, which means they’d finish 19 days earlier than the rescheduled begin of the delayed Tokyo Olympics. There can be 4 completely different six-team, winner-goes-to-the-Olympics tournaments hosted by Canada, Croatia, Lithuania and Serbia.

Toronto coach Nick Nurse is scheduled to educate Canada in that qualifying event and, he hopes, the Olympics. But he expects that worldwide journey is without doubt one of the final issues that may return to regular, or no matter the brand new regular can be in a world coping with COVID-19.

So, he’s like Kerr and left questioning what’ll occur.

“It’s complicated, is my best thought,” Nurse stated. “I just don’t know enough to tell you what next season is going to look like. I don’t know. When’s it going to start? I think they’re talking about pushing it back, but I don’t know if they’re going to play games closer together. I don’t think so, that’s kind of a thing that everybody’s been happy that they continue to spread them out and lessen the back-to-backs and all those things.

“But if they do that, then it’s probably going to run into the Olympics, or really close to it, right? Lots of things that I don’t have a crystal ball on,” Nurse added.

Nurse, Popovich and Kerr absolutely aren’t the one coaches questioning on this level. Golden State affiliate head coach Mike Brown is about to educate Nigeria in Tokyo, Toronto assistant Sergio Scariolo will coach Spain and Philadelphia coach Brett Brown will coach Australia. Nigeria, Australia and Spain have joined the U.S. as having earned Olympic berths already, together with host Japan, Argentina, Iran and France.

And on the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics, a document 46 gamers from the NBA participated. Had the Olympics gone off this summer season as deliberate, much more NBA gamers may have been there relying on which groups received the ultimate 4 qualifying spots.

If the 2020-21 NBA season begins in December, that will probably imply a May end to the common season and critical potential for a schedule collision — NBA playoffs going off similtaneously the Olympic qualifiers and maybe the Olympics themselves. The NBA has informed gamers that it’s planning for a December begin to the season, provided that this season’s NBA Finals as soon as issues restart subsequent month on the Disney complicated close to Orlando, Florida may final till Oct. 12.

But a technique the NBA may alleviate the potential for an Olympic downside is to get away from the player-friendlier scheduling fashions utilized in latest seasons that tremendously lowered back-to-backs and eradicated the dreaded stretches of 4 video games in 5 nights. If the league did that, it may purchase a while and probably make the Olympics match on some participant 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,” stated Atlanta basic supervisor Travis Schlenk, whose coach — Lloyd Pierce — can be scheduled to be a USA Basketball assistant subsequent summer season together with Kerr and Villanova’s Jay Wright.

Whether that’ll occur or not is anybody’s guess. Until that’s identified, it is extremely a lot a ready sport.

“We’re just sort of waiting to hear what the news is,” Kerr stated. “If the news is good and we’re going to be able to take part, we’ll be ready to roll. And if not, we’ll deal with it later.”