Canada will not be one of the teams competing this summer in London during the Olympic basketball tournament. They didn’t qualify. They didn’t come close, really.
So they are turning to a model they know and the best basketball player the nation has ever produced — Steve Nash — to turn it around. And no, that does not mean Nash is playing, reports the Vancouver Sun (via J.E. Skeets).Two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash will likely take the same type of executive director role with Canada Basketball that the retired Wayne Gretzky assumed with Hockey Canada in the lead-up to the 2002 Olympics.
Wayne Parrish, Canada Basketball’s president-CEO, said Tuesday that he’s had conversations with the Victoria-raised Nash, who is still playing at a high level at age 38, about being an “overseer or executive director” for the national senior men’s team as it points toward the 2016 and 2020 Olympics.There are some good young players coming out of Canada — such as Cavaliers rookie Tristan Thompson — that will be the real keys. A good CEO of the program helps, but at the end of the day it is about talent on the court. Canada needs more of it. But having Nash head the program would boost the profile of the program, and that’s a big start.
