Olympic basketball roster an iffy deal

Associated Press

With training camp less than a year away and no guarantee of games before then, Jerry Colangelo is ready to start finding out who wants to play on the 2012 U.S. Olympic team.

USA Basketball’s chairman said he plans to start contacting candidates “soon, within the next month” to gauge their interest in going to London.

“Just to make contact with all of the people on our list, give them a whole picture of what is coming,” Colangelo said. “Basically to get a read from them as to what their interests and intentions are in advance.”

Kobe Bryant, LeBron James and the rest of the 2008 gold medalists all committed to returning to the program through 2012, but Colangelo realizes that “circumstances have changed for some of the players who were on the Olympic team.”

So some of those spots — perhaps even half — will be filled by holdovers from last year’s world championship team. By winning that tournament, the U.S. automatically qualified for London, sparing the Americans having to qualify this summer without locked-out NBA players.

“That was our priority and it happened, and thank goodness with kind of the sky falling,” Colangelo said, referring to the league’s uncertain labor situation.

Colangelo is using the time off to prepare for next summer. He recently returned from a trip to London to look at the setup, and is making plans for training camp, exhibition games and “the nuances of the Olympics starting earlier [than 2008] next year.”

The biggest question is who will be there with him.

The roster of 12 players plus alternates has to be selected June 18, potentially before the NBA finals — if there are any — are over. Training camp would open around July 4 for the July 27 start of the Olympics.

“I’m really not worried about [anyone] not being available. If someone chooses not to play, that’s one thing,” Colangelo said, adding no players have told him they weren’t playing, but he has read reports of some wavering.

“The one thing I do know, we have an outstanding pool of players.”