NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Former Commodores Darius Garland and John Jenkins were invited to the Team USA Men’s Select roster as announced by USA Basketball on Thursday.
As members of the USA Select Team, Garland and Jenkins will scrimmage and practice against Team USA prior to the National Team’s departure for the Olympic Games in Tokyo. All workouts will take place July 6-9 at UNLV’s Mendenhall Center in Las Vegas. Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra will serve as head coach of the USA Select Team.
Jenkins, who twice led the SEC in scoring and set an SEC record with 134 made threes as a junior, was drafted with the 23rd overall pick in 2013. A member of Bilbao Basket in Italy, Jenkins played for Team USA during the November 2019 World Cup Qualifying window and the November 2020 AmeriCup Qualifying window and helped the USA to a combined 4-0 record.
A native of Nashville and the fifth overall selection in the 2019 NBA Draft, Garland just completed his second season with the Cavs. In 54 games last season, he averaged 17.4 points, 4.9 assists and 1.0 steals per game while shooting 45 percent from the field and 40 percent from 3-point range.
“This USA Select Team continues the legacy established by previous Select teams of helping prepare our USA National Team for the Tokyo Olympic Games,” said Jerry Colangelo, USA Basketball Men’s National Team managing director. “With all the uncertainty of how many of our Olympic Team members will be available for the USA training camp because of the overlap with the NBA Finals, we chose a USA Select Team consisting of many of the top young NBA players and four players who not only own international experience, but who played recently for USA Basketball in important national team qualifying competitions. If we need to add players to fill out our roster for any of our exhibition games, we feel this USA Select Team has an excellent variety of skilled players to choose from.”
Members of Team USA include Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard, Draymond Green, Jayson Tatum and James Harden among several other NBA All-Stars.
