USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo has high interest in this year`s NBA Finals
This year`s NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Oklahoma City Thunder features six players who would be attending a preparatory camp in July to become a part of the US Men`s Basketball team that will represent the country
in the Olympics. The high number of players participating in the series has brought great interest from USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo.
“A third of our player pool is in the finals, six of them,” Colangelo said. “So I’m watching it very closely and my party line is, I wish them all well and good health.”
The six players who would be a part of the camp in July include the likes of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden. All three of the Miami players were key components in team USA`s
run to winning the gold medal in the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
Wade has however not made any clear commitment as to whether he would be playing in the summer or not, totally depending on how he feels after the season. Nonetheless the good news for the Americans is that Chris Bosh made a successful
comeback to the Miami line up after missing 9 games in the playoffs.
Bosh`s 19 point performance which included a career best 3 triples against the Boston Celtics in Game 7 was very pleasing to the eye, especially to Colangelo who was very anxious to see him return.
“I was very happy to see that,” Colangelo said “Watching him come back, we were anxious to see how he would come back and I think he’s passed a lot of tests in my opinion, and as long as there’s no reoccurrence of any kind of a
strain during the finals here, he should be fine. So we’re very pleased about that.”
This year`s condensed NBA schedule was not very kind to team USA as several players got severely injured, ruling them out of the Olympics.
Injuries to key players like Dwight Howard, Derrick Rose, LaMarcus Aldridge and Chauncey Billups left the team management with no choice but to ask the US Olympic Committee for an exception by letting them include the likes of
Harden and Kentucky`s All-American freshman, Anthony Davis among the selected candidates way after the original deadline.
The camp for the Olympics is scheduled to start from July 6th, giving team USA enough time to get ready for the London Games in August.
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