Longtime Canadian player/coach withdraws from national coaching search

TORONTO — Jay Triano’s long term as head coach of Canada’s men’s basketball team has come to an end.

The 60-year-old confirmed Sunday night that he’d withdrawn his name from the ongoing coaching search for “personal reasons.”

The Canadian team is without a coach ahead of the 2019 FIBA World Cup that begins Aug. 31 in China. The World Cup is the main qualifier for the 2020 Toyko Olympics.

Canada Basketball’s CEO Glen Grunwald and general manager of the men’s program Rowan Barrett expect to have a coach in place by the end of March.

Triano is a two-time Olympian, the only Canadian to have been an NBA head coach — with the Toronto Raptors in 2008 to 2010 — and coached Canada at its last Olympic appearance, a thrilling 5-2 run en route to a seventh-place finish at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

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He left the program in 2005 but returned as head coach in 2012, and served as head coach through last summer, guiding Canada through one of the World Cup qualifying windows before joining the Charlotte Hornets as an assistant coach. 

Among the front-runners are Roy Rana, who coached Canada to a U19 world title in 2017, and Gord Herbert, who played for Canada at the 1984 Olympics and now coaches Skyliners Frankfurt in the German league. Both Rana and Herbert coached Canada in World Cup qualifying, Rana coaching in four of the windows and Herbert in one.

San Antonio Spurs assistant coach Ettore Messina is reported to be in the mix.

Lori Ewing , The Canadian Press