Jerry Colangelo, Chairman of Team USA said that Paul George has a spot on the USA team that will be going to the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.
From Scott Howard-Cooper of NBA.com:
“We’ve told him we have a spot for him in ’16,” Colangelo told NBA.com at festivities Thursday in advance of the Friday enshrinement of the Hall of Fame class.
Without seeing how he comes back?
“Right,” said Colangelo, also the Hall chairman. “That’s what we told him.
“We thought it’s the right thing to do,” Colangelo said. “That’s it…. We didn’t give thought to all the detail. Just that when a guy goes down and all these things, the circumstances, his career passes before him, he’s out for a year, a year-plus, he’s not able to participate now with us — we wanted to throw that out and say, ‘We’re counting on you. You’ve got a spot in ’16.’
Team USA plans to pay a tribute to Paul George at the FIBA Championship games as well.
USA Basketball has looked into a uniform patch with his initials or jersey number, and adopting the NBA tradition of writing a message on shoes, but the rules of FIBA, the sport’s international governing body, prohibit altering uniforms. So USAB may move to change the rules.
“As far as the players are concerned, this is a rallying point in terms of what happened to Paul,”Colangelo said. “We just want to take some steps that are yet to be determined that we’re talking about to bring attention to Paul George and what his contribution has been.”
Classy move by all…
joshcolon 