Originally Posted by
flyingdutchdevil
Because Paul George is still fresh in their mind. Because they don't want their players fatigued to start the season.
If I'm an NBA coach, I would hate for my best players to play in international competition. Can they get better and learn a thing or to? Sure. But I'm not sure that outweighs the risk/rest factor.
Look at Messi and Barcelona. He played in the Copa America this past summer with Argentina. A few weeks later, in his first training session with Barcelona, he gets injured and has now missed the first ~4 games of the season and likely more.
I mentioned this upthread, too, but the FIBA calendar change I believe really had an impact. It's easier to get people to sign up when the summer tournaments aren't back-to-back. For players with their sights on the Olympics, doing the full 2018-19 NBA season, plus playoffs, plus FIBA, plus 2019-20 season, plus playoffs, plus Olympics, plus 2020-21 season, plus playoffs without a summer off is a huge workload, and cutting the 2019 FIBA out of that is the easiest one to do. Having a year with no international tournament between the FIBA and Olympics was a much better schedule from a participation perspective.
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