Canada Basketball Announces GLOBL JAM Men’s Training Camp Invites

GLOBL JAM, the FIBA U23 event created by Sportsnet and Canada Basketball in 2022, returns to the Mattamy Athletic Centre from July 12-16, 2023.

A Brief Rundown of the U23 Tournament

Compared to the traditional FIBA junior international events (the U16 regional championship, U17 World Cup, U18 region championship, U19 World Cup), GLOBL JAM, a U23 event, is much smaller in scale. At its core, GLOBL JAM is an event for Canada’s collegiate players to have a chance to showcase their talents on a bigger stage and represent their country A total of 4 teams (including Canada) participate in this short tournament. For GLOBL JAM 2023, Canada’s opponents will be Germany, Team Africa and the USA (represented by the University of Kentucky Men’s Basketball Team). Last year, the USA were represented by the Baylor Bears, led by 2023 1st round draft pick Keyonte George.

This year Kentucky sports an impressive freshman class, headlined by 5 star prospects Justin Edwards, Aaron Bradshaw, DJ Wagner and Robert Dillingham. Definitely some high level talent coming up north for this tournament.

Canada’s Roster for 2023 GLOBL JAM

While the men’s final roster hasn’t been officially announced yet, Canada Basketball did announce the training camp invites for this year’s team. From the 18 athletes invited, 12 (as is FIBA convention) will make the final cut.

Overall I think that this year’s roster is shaping up to be weaker than Canada’s roster at the inaugural GLOBL JAM in 2022. Three Canadians from last year’s roster have signed some type of NBA contract and the roster was also filled out with some other high major D1 talent (Emanuel Miller, Ryan Nembhard, Quincy Guerrier, Stef Smith, Keeshawn Barthelemy).

For GLOBL JAM 2023, only 1 of the training camp invitees play for a high major D1 program, 6’7″ guard Jahmyl Telfort who transferred to Butler for the upcoming season. Other notable names to me include Thomas Kennedy, who returns to GLOBL JAM for the second time, and former top 100 HS recruits Enoch Boakye and Addison Patterson who have both had rocky careers at the D1 level. Nana Owusu-Anane was also someone who had impressive flashes at the FIBA U19 World Cup in 2021. That being said, this invite list is definitely lacking in the more much “established” high major talent.

I do think it is worth mentioning that 5 of the invitees are from USports programs! Cool to see the game and talent growing in Canada’s collegiate system. It’s been a reliable source of Winter Core mainstays (the Scrubbs, Kaza Kajami-Keane, Aaron Best, etc.) and along with the CEBL are integral to developing Canada’s talent depth.

• July 12th: Canada vs Team Africa, 8:00 PM
• July 13th: Canada vs USA, 8:00 PM
• July 15th: Canada vs Germany, 8:00 PM