Ben Gordon will not play for Great Britain at the London Olympics later this month after he failed to report to their Houston training camp by the June 30 deadline.
The NBA guard, who recently moved to the Charlotte Bobcats has been on GB’s books since 2008 but has not attended a single training session, let alone played for the national team. Coach Chris Finch included Gordon in the provisional squad in April and was hopeful he would arrive at the Houston Rockets practice facilities for camp.
He never showed.
There was hope in the summer of 2010 when Gordon arrived in Liverpool wearing Team GB’s off-court gear and posing with his national jersey during a Eurobasket qualifier, but that also turned out to be false hope.
Though it hasn’t been offically announced, promising young guard Devon van Oostrum looks to have been cut from Finch’s final squad, as seen on his Twitter page, meaning that Great Britain will be light on guards.
Rumour went around that van Oostrum’s exclusion from the squad was to make room for Gordon at the last minute, NBA officials told British Basketball magazine MVP that the Bobcats player would not come to Europe due to “personal reasons”.
But now with neither player on the roster at the moment, surely it’s time for the rightful fan favourite van Oostrum, who excelled at last year’s Olympic Test Event and Eurobasket in Lithuania to be recalled to the team. A fearless player who will no doubt relish being on the Olympic roster.
GB are currently back home after landing at Heathrow earlier this morning. They travel to Orleans next week to play France before moving on to Spain to face the reigning Eurobasket gold-medallists.
Information via BBC Sport.
