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USA Basketball's Jerry Colangelo says it will become more difficult to get top NBA players to play in Olympics

TOKYO — Jerry Colangelo, who guided USA Basketball out of the doldrums and engineered three straight runs to Olympic gold, said Friday he believes it will only get more difficult going forward to convince the NBA’s top players to make firm commitments to play for Team USA.

“I think we rode the crest early on with commitments from players, top players who bought into everything we were selling at the time and the reality is we live in a different world than it was 15 or 16 years ago,” Colangelo said during a 35-minute session with reporters. “Players, whether it’s admitted or not, money and careers and things like that are of the utmost importance – even moreso today than then ... Looking at the list of people that aren’t here there’s a story behind each one of them, some of which we can talk about and some of which you really shouldn’t talk about because that’s their private business. So all we can do is make the opportunity available.”

Colangelo and head coach Gregg Popovich have come under criticism for the current state of Team USA, which finished seventh in the 2019 FIBA World Cup of basketball, lost two exhibitions in the lead-up to the Olympics and began its run in Tokyo with a loss to France. The U.S. has since rebounded to beat Iran and still has a chance to win the gold medal, but the mere prospect of Team USA giving up the crown after such an utterly dominant run on the world stage has shined a spotlight on multiple roster decisions that seem questionable in retrospect.

Though a number of top American players like LeBron James and Stephen Curry preferred to use their short NBA offseason to rest, and others like Anthony Davis were injured an unable to play, Colangelo said several others declined for personal reasons or were discouraged from playing at the Olympics by their NBA teams.

“There were a few players whose teams just didn’t want them to play,” Colangelo said. “They were looking at it from their own perspective, their team perspective. I get it. I understand that. So that eliminated some of those people. Contracts played a role. All those things played a role but that’s not any excuse. I’d say to you we’re still blessed with an awful lot of talent in this country just like this roster has an awful lot of talent.”

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Devin Booker drives to the basket while being defended by Iran's Behnam Yakhchalidehkordi.
Devin Booker drives to the basket while being defended by Iran's Behnam Yakhchalidehkordi.

Colangelo, who is yielding the position of men’s national team managing director to Grant Hill after the Tokyo Games, said he did not think it was possible in the current environment to get multi-year commitments from players as he did after 2004 when an embarrassing performance in Athens led to an overhaul of USA Basketball.

One of the issues, Colangelo said, is that after 2014, the World Cup was moved from two years before the Olympics to the year before. In other words, a multi-tournament commitment in the name of building continuity would require players to spend consecutive summers with USA Basketball, something few would be willing to do.

“The powers that be changed the format and they thought it was going to be a positive and I immediately said it’s not good for USA Basketball,” Colangelo said. “We’ve got a system, we’ve got it cranked up pretty good and when you now take away that two-year cycle it throws everything out of whack.”

Still, the way the team has performed to this point has raised questions about some specific roster decisions, including the original addition of forward Kevin Love, who ultimately dropped out during the training camp and was replaced by JaVale McGee. That has left the U.S. with somewhat of a thin front line, which was problematic when France played two 7-footers for most of the second half.

“If you look at the depth chart on bigs in our country, it’s very slim,” Colangelo said. “For the most part the best bigs in the NBA are international players so the depth chart based on who was available, who wasn’t injured, who didn’t have a contract situation, that’s where we were.”

Colangelo was also asked about Atlanta Hawks point guard Trae Young, whose social media posts suggest he wanted to make the team but was not chosen.

“I’m happy that he wants to play for USA Basketball,” Colangelo said. “We had him in one of our camps. We know him in USA Basketball. He’s done really well in the NBA, but predicated on what we felt we needed he didn’t fit the bill this time around. He’s a young player. He has a future with USA Basketball, but it was the opinion of our staff that it wasn’t now.”

Colangelo’s message was essentially this: All the angst goes away if the U.S. can come together over the next week and play to its talent level. If not, even after three gold medals, he’ll be ripe for criticism on his way out the door.

“If we win, there weren’t any mistakes,” Colangelo said. “If we lose, it will be pointed out that we made a lot of mistakes and we’ll have to respond to it.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Jerry Colangelo defends Team USA Olympic men's basketball roster