Jimmy Butler will not play for Team USA at the Tokyo Olympics, Ira Winderman of the South Florida Sun Sentinel tweets. Butler had an invite but he battled through a variety of ailments this season and had a short turnaround between seasons after Miami surprisingly reached the NBA Finals last summer.
We have more info on this year’s Olympics:
- The Rockets’ Kelly Olynyk and Raptors’ Khem Birch are among the prominent players not listed among the 24 players Team Canada submitted to FIBA in advance of its Olympic qualifier, Michael Grange of Rogers Sportsnet tweets. They’re both unrestricted free agents. The Grizzlies’ Brandon Clarke is also not on the preliminary list, Blake Murphy of The Athletic tweets. The 24-man roster can be found here.
- Nate Bjorkgren, who was let go by the Pacers after one season as head coach, will join Nick Nurse’s Team Canada staff, Marc Stein of the New York Times tweets. Bjorkgren was one of Nurse’s top assistants before his stint with Indiana.
- MVP Nikola Jokic won’t play for the Serbian team at the Olympic qualifier due to an exhausting NBA campaign, according to Mike Singer of The Denver Post. Jokic told Serbian news agency Tanjug, “Simply, the condition of my body requires a longer absence from the court for recovery.” The Denver Post story asserts Jokic won’t play in the Olympics even if his national team qualifies, while an ESPN story says it’s unclear if Jokic would participate in Tokyo.
- The Australian national team will play exhibitions against Team USA, Nigeria and Argentina in Las Vegas before departing for Tokyo, David Aldridge of The Athletic tweets. The 19-man preliminary roster, which will be trimmed to 12, is expected to be loaded with NBA players, including Ben Simmons and Joe Ingles.
Can’t wait for this Olympic tournament, it should be just as great as the Rio tourney if not even better. Competition just keeps getting stronger & stronger. Makes it easy to see how the game has grown & is being played at a higher level than ever worldwide. A couple of Nuggets teammates, Monte Morris & Facu Compazzo are gonna have huge tournaments for Nigeria & Argentina. G-State teammates Andrew Wiggins & Steph Curry should make big impacts as well for the North American squads. Australia should finally pull thru & get a medal w/ guys like Ben Simmons, Patty Mills, Jingles & Giddey. Don’t sleep on Nigeria tho, if Monte plays they’re gonna be extremely tough
It will be good to see Morris get a run with a different group. The playoffs went okay for him but he did not want to start!
Understandable that he rather come off the bench bc he got to handle the ball way more in that role. I think he could be an all tournament type guy & possibly lead Nigeria to a medal
With all of the injuries around the league this year I can’t imagine too many of the older players would want to risk going to Japan this summer. With next season starting on time in mid-October anyone choosing to participate in the Olympics is putting themselves in serious jeopardy for 2022. Is it really worth it?
Sounds eerily similar to what many basic people were saying about going to Rio in 2016 with the Zika scare. Plenty of the best players in the world still went. None caught Zika. The tournament was incredible (im sure u missed it) & the USA squad won but had to adjust to a higher level of competition than they were initially ready for. And yea an Olympic gold medal is obv worth it
i would not go to japan. with 18-20% vaccinated and the pandemic still very widespread and with nuclear waste sipping into ground and being leaked out to the pacific, that is a dangerous place!
America is also an extremely dangerous place if you aren’t aware, especially for Black guys like the vast majority of the league. Good to know that u wouldn’t go but there’s a lot of differences between u & the guys that have a chance to be on the US senior men’s national basketball team.