When Canada Basketball released its 29-man training camp invite list ahead of next month's FIBA Basketball World Cup, the depth in talent was easy to see.
Head coach Nick Nurse, fresh off leading the Toronto Raptors to their first NBA championship, has his pick of 17 current NBA players, along with a handful of players at the top European clubs and big NCAA programs. The message from the 51-year-old bench boss and Canada general manager Rowan Barrett is one of commitment to the program.
Training camp is set to begin at the beginning of August and includes seven exhibition games in Canada and Australia before the team's first World Cup game in China on Sept. 1, keeping players together for six consecutive weeks. It's a long haul, but the men in charge say that the players will have to remain engaged throughout the entire process if the team's goals of medalling at the World Cup and securing a berth at the 2020 Olympics are to be met.
"We clearly need to have that commitment and have the players in. If you're in, you need to show up on the first day," Barrett said on a conference call Tuesday. "I don't know that we can have something where guys float in and out. By the time we start our first day of camp, those players that are in camp on the floor, we will expect to be available for us [at the World Cup]."
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Nurse took over Canada's coaching duties last month, and given the short amount of time the team has to get used to the new coach, it'll be paramount for the players to be locked in from the beginning.
"We have seven friendly games and we're going to need those," Nurse said. "It's important that these guys are here and ready to go."
One player who won't be representing Canada this summer is Andrew Wiggins, the Minnesota Timberwolves forward who has shied away from national team call-ups for several years. Barrett said Canada Basketball staff have "had some conversations" with Wiggins, but the 24-year-old decided against wearing the Maple Leaf this time around.
"He's not feeling like this is the right time for him, and we have to respect that," Barrett said. "From now we'll move forward and focus on — and respect — all the other players who have decided to play."
MORE: Canada's roster and schedule for 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup
Missing out on a player of Wiggins' talent would have been a major concern for Canada teams in the past, but with the likes of Jamal Murray, R.J. Barrett, Tristan Thompson, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Cory Joseph on the initial list, Nurse will have plenty of options to build a competitive squad.
The coach is looking forward to seeing what Canada's latest generation can achieve.
"When I get a team at whatever level it is, the plans are for us to maximize our talent, play extremely hard, develop some chemistry, [and] be really hard to knock out of a competition, and I think it's a talented group of guys,"
Nurse said. "If these guys can do that, we can go as far as we want to go, but there's some work to do.
"We've got to get together, we have to develop a really tough mentality defensively, and we have to develop a selfless hit-the-open-man offensive mentality. When you start doing those things, who knows where you can go?"