Jay Triano: Don’t call it a comeback

“I thought it was a breakfast meeting and it turned out to be a breakfast termination.”That is how Jay Triano recalls his morning meeting with Canada Basketball officials on October 19th, 2004. It is A call to an execution. The national basketball team under his command had failed to qualify for the 2004 Olympics; but just four years earlier he had bossed them to a 5-2 finish in Australia at the Sydney Games, an underdog’s triumph. That team was led by superstar point guard Steve Nash, who doggedly led a group of unheralded players to seventh place in the quarter-final finish down under. The Canadians have not been back to the Olympics since.Make no mistake that the “breakfast termination” helped fester nearly a decade’s worth […]