Team USA's training camp is scheduled to start today as many players arrived in Las Vegas yesterday for a three day tune up before they start the qualifying tournament for the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. 34 players are in attendance at the camp but a few are expected to sit out due to injuries. A couple of players that will surprisingly be participating in the camp are Carmelo Anthony and Kevin Durant who were expected to be excused from minicamp due to injuries, according to Marc Stein of ESPN.
While both Durant and Anthony are expected to participate they won't be able to do everything during this three day camp. The first two days are expected to be light noncontact practices involving a lot of shooting which is safe for the two stars to participate in. Neither Melo nor KD will play in the Thursday night intrasquad game though as they have not yet been cleared for contact.
All players were required to attend camp, regardless of injuries, if they wanted to remain eligible for the 2016 Olympics, a rule made by Jerry Colangelo and USA Basketball. Guys like Kyrie Irving, Kevin Love, and Chandler Parsons are in attendance but will not be participating in any drills as they are still recovering from injuries while LeBron James has been excused from all activities after being in Las Vegas for only one day.
Durant fractured his foot last season and was only able to play in 27 games for the Oklahoma City Thunder. In total Durant had three separate surgeries to repair the foot but is now ready to start ramping up his activity according to Thunder general manager Sam Presti.
"Kevin has been incredibly disciplined in his return-to-play protocol, and he's now at the stage where he can participate in noncontact drill work, we are excited he is at the point where he can take part in portions of the minicamp, as he has demonstrated great focus throughout his recovery efforts," said Presti.
Anthony, on the other hand, underwent knee surgery in February to fix an issue with the tendon in his left knee. Anthony was not expected to be recovering this fast but he says that it's coming along great.
"I'm doing extremely well; rehab is going very, very well. I'm actually ahead of schedule [compared] to where everybody predicted I would be at this point in time," said Anthony.
If Durant can stay healthy through the next NBA season he is a good bet to be on the Olympic roster in Brazil. Anthony might not be as much of a lock as he once was as he is getting up there in age and Colangelo and head coach Mike Krzyzewski might want to go in a younger direction for 2016.
