USA has had the most dominant basketball program for quite some time now, but other parts of the world have slowly started to catch up in recent years. Over the years we’ve seen Spain, France, Serbia, Argentina and Lithuania climb the world rankings, but Canadian forward and 5-star Duke commit R.J. Barrett believes Canada is ready to take a run at the world’s top team.
The 2018 Gatorade National Basketball Player of the Year recently sat down with Dime Magazine, where he spoke about the current basketball situation in Canada and why he believes the Canadian national team has what it takes to compete against USA for gold medals. Here’s part of the interview with Dime Magazine, which they also transcribed.
DIME Magazine: What do you guys, when you talk with other young dudes on this Canadian team, what do you hope to accomplish over the next 10-15 years of ball with the national team?
RJ Barrett: To go to the Olympics and get a gold medal. We’re going to have a great pool of talent, the older veterans are going to start getting into their prime soon, along with the younger guys that are going to have a couple years of experience, myself and Andrew Nemhard. I think if we all pull together we’d have a really good team and make some noise.
DIME Magazine: And to get to the point where you’re winning championships, and you’re winning gold medals with this group, historically it’s shown that all roads go through the United States. What makes this group of Canadian players so well-equipped to do that?
RJ: I’ve beaten the USA twice in my lifetime, so they’re beatable. I feel with all the great players we have, a whole bunch of NBA players now, they have experience. So it’s really going to be a fair game, and I think we can take them.
Barrett was also asked about the recent rise in popularity for basketball throughout Canada, which he credits to the Toronto Raptors’ recent success and the Canadian players currently playing in the NBA.
RJ: "I’d say it’s definitely the success of the Raptors, and really the people that have come up in Canada that are going to the NBA and being successful. You have Kelly Olynyk, Andrew Wiggins, you’ve got Steve Nash that played. So you have this — Cory Joseph — there’s just a lot of players up and coming here that are doing well in the NBA, so I feel like the young kids, we … for me growing up, what I can see in guys like Tristan Thompson, I felt like “wow, I can do this, too, I can achieve this.”
The Mississauga, Ontario native also discusses what he would like to accomplish during his basketball career, the things that weigh on his mind leading up to his first year with the Duke Blue Devils and much more.
You can check out the entire interview here.
(H/T UPROXX)
