Even as they battle to restart the game here on the island, the Jamaica Basketball Association (JaBA) President Paulton Gordon said getting a team to play in the recent FIBA World Cup Central America and the Caribbean Pre-Qualifiers 2023 held at the Adolfo Pineda Gymnasium in San Salvador, El Salvador, took a lot of work.

Jamaica just failed to advance to the second round of the pre-qualifying set for July after losing their final game against the hosts by two points (68-66) and finished fourth in the five-team tournament that saw 10 games being played in a five-day span.

The Jamaican team had just three local-based players and managed just two practice sessions before the start of the tournament after accepting the invite three weeks before the start after another team failed to take up the invite.

“The World Cup Pre-qualifying [that took part] in El Salvador, we were able to pull that together, it’s not ideal as we wanted to have a three- to five-day camp that could not happen because of the approval process,” Gordon said in a recent virtual meeting of the Kiwanis Club of Eastern St Andrew.

“Luckily or unluckily the vast majority of persons who participated in that event are based in North America so they were able to practise and get certain things done, but as I said it was not ideal because we went into this tournament without playing as a group,” Gordon pointed out while outlining the various steps they had to take to make the trip happen.

“The logistics of getting there was another issue; they had to get a PCR test 10 days before, then three days before travel another PCR test and these cost money [but] thanks to the UWI hospital we were able to get that done. Then issues related to transit and transport and new visa requirements,” he said, also added to their list of issues.

— Paul Reid