Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up

Official: Jamal Murray will not be playing for Team Canada at FIBA Americas

FIBA U17 World Championships - Dubai

Getty Images

Getty Images

It’s official now: Jamal Murray will not be a part of Canada’s Olympic qualifying team at the FIBA Americas tournament later this month.

On Thursday, Canada released a 13-man roster for the Tuto Marchand tournament -- an exhibition tournament prior to the FIBA Americas event -- a roster that will be whittled to 12 before Team Canada makes the trip to Mexico City on Aug. 31st. Murray was not on it, meaning that Kentucky commit will be enrolling in school in Lexington on Aug. 26th.

Jamal Murray would not have been a starting point guard for Canadians at this event, but given the expectations that the Canadian basketball program has for their young star, they wanted him on the roster to gain as much experience as possible. But doing so would have meant that he would have to miss nearly three weeks at the start of his first semester on campus.

It’s a similar situation to the one that Karl-Anthony Towns dealt with prior to enrolling at Kentucky last season. If Murray had gone with the Canadian team to the FIBA Americas event, he would have had to enroll at Kentucky at the end of the first semester, which is the middle of December.