Cleveland Cavaliers’ Luol Deng, Portland Trailblazers’ Joel Freeland and Philadelphia 76ers’ Byron Mulens have been included in this summer’s Great Britain side for the upcoming Eurobasket 2015 Qualifiers.
The three players commitment to the GB team this summer will be subject to free agency and whether they will be asked to play in the NBA summer league.
Coach Joe Prunty has selected 22 players for training camp with two warm-up games against Latvia in Worcester before they face Belgium on the road and then compete in a four nations tournament in Georgia to face the hosts, Belarus and Moldova.
Prunty will be without his assistant from last year Guy Goodes, who is choosing to concentrate on his newly promoted role as head coach of Maccabi Electra Tel Aviv. Goodes will be replaced by Alberto Lorenzo, who was part of the Estudiantes coaching staff for the last seven years. Lorenzo, like Goodes before him is on hand to help the NBA-based coaches. GB great Nate Reinking will continue on as another of the assistant coaches.
There are 11 returnees from last year’s Eurobasket campaign. New faces include former GB Futures guard Ben Mockford, UC Irvine’s Luke Nelson, who impressed for England at the 2013 Nike International Junior Tournament in London during the Euroleague Final Four and Ovie Soko.
The two notable absentees from the roster are Pops Mensah-Bonsu, who is suffering from knee troubles and has decided to terminate his international career and standout guard Andrew Lawrence.
I am very excited about the prospects for this team this summer, just as I was before the start of last season and we will be looking to improve on the successes we had,” Prunty told gbbasketball.com.
“In 2013, some of our younger players developed into critical members of our squad and blended in well with some of the more established veterans.
“We displayed tremendous growth and look forward to taking the next steps to develop an even stronger squad this summer.”
Great Britain will be in Group A of the Eurobasket Qualifying Round, where they will face Bosnia & Herzegovina and Iceland.
Great Britain preliminary squad for EuroBasket 2015 2nd Qualifying Round: Kieron Achara, Ogo Adegboye, Eric Boateng, Matthew Bryan-Amaning, Daniel Clark, Luol Deng, Ali Fraser, Joel Freeland, Paul Guede, Ashley Hamilton, Myles Hesson, Kyle Johnson, James Jones, Ben Mockford, Byron Mullens, Gareth Murray, Luke Nelson, Teddy Okereafor, Justin Robinson, Ovie Soko, Drew Sullivan, Devon Van Oostrum.
