The Polish national team has formally announced a 17-man preliminary roster for next month’s Olympic qualifying tournament in Valencia, Spain (hat tip to Eurohoops). Poland will be grouped with Finland and the Bahamas in that tournament and will vie with Angola, Lebanon, and Spain for the right to compete in the 12-team men’s basketball tournament at the Olympics in Paris.
Poland’s roster doesn’t feature much NBA talent, but there is one player currently active in the league: Spurs forward Jeremy Sochan was named to the 17-man squad, which will be trimmed to 12 players for the qualifying tournament Sochan previously won a gold medal with Poland at an under-16 championship in 2019 and also represented the country at the EuroBasket 2022 qualifiers.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- On the heels of being named this season’s EuroLeague MVP, former NBA guard Mike James appears to be on the verge of signing a contract extension with AS Monaco. As Johnny Askounis relays for Eurohoops, a report from Gabriel Pantel-Jouve of BeBasket indicates that James and Monaco are set to complete a three-year deal that will increase the guard’s annual salary to three million Euros per season.
- A total of four men have now been charged by federal prosecutors in the sports betting scandal related to Jontay Porter‘s lifetime ban from the NBA, reports Jennifer Peltz of The Associated Press. The defendants are being accused of profiting from prop bets based on the knowledge that Porter would exit a pair of games early. The complaint also alleges that Porter – who isn’t identified by name but fits the description of the player described – was supposed to receive a portion of the winnings.
- In an Insider-only story for ESPN.com, Bobby Marks of ESPN identifies five teams who may not receive as much attention this summer as high-profile franchise like the Lakers and Sixers, but who could have eventful and important offseason ahead of them. Marks’ picks? The Bulls, Trail Blazers, Jazz, Pelicans, and Spurs.
- With the Lakers reportedly in pursuit of UConn head coach Dan Hurley, Alex Andrejev of The Athletic considers the history of accomplished college coaches making the leap to the NBA and evaluates how several of the most notable names – including Billy Donovan, Larry Brown, and Rick Pitino – fared at the professional level.
History seems to point to NBA coaches being more successful when they rose to the NBA ranks organically. It’s more rare when they do well by transitioning from college or were an NBA player.
If nothing else, college coaches, who move up, tend to move around a lot more, from team to team, than the norm. Pitino, and especially Larry Brown, did this a ton!
Organically? Like dirt? A flower pot perhaps?
“With the winner facing the winner of the Angola/Lebanon/Spain group for the right to compete in the […] Olympics”. Actually, it doesn’t work like that: the two best teams in each group advance to the semifinals (1st of one group vs 2nd of the other), then the winner of the final gets to the Olympics.
Right, thanks. You’d think I’d remember that, considering I wrote the linked story about the qualifying tournaments that describes that process
is porter in any legal trouble too?
He’s cooperating with the investigation and hasn’t been charged with anything to this point.
Spurs have an easy off season… Don’t take any long term dead money…
They need more time in the oven… No need to rush things…
Seriously? Mike James was Euroleague MVP? I cannot fathom…
They have the wrong one in the link. He is almost 50 still going
To clarify, this is the one that played for the Nets a few years ago, not the one that played for the Bulls longer ago. Our player linker generated the wrong Bask-Ref link.