COLORADO SPRINGS (United States of America) – USA Basketball named former NBA head coach Mike Fratello as USA’s Head Coach for the first window of the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 Qualifiers in February 2020.

"This is one of the ultimate things you could ever ask for - being able to try and put a team together that represents your country, what could be better than that?" said Fratello in the USA Basketball Press Release. "I've coached at every level really - high school, college, NBA, and then international, and now it's international for your own country which is as good as it gets. It's a great honor and I'm thrilled to have it."

Fratello, who served as an NBA head coach during 17 seasons, will be assisted by Andy Greer and former NBA and USA Basketball athlete Othella Harrington.

Fratello led NBA teams to the playoffs in 11 of his 15 full seasons as head coach and has previous FIBA experience having coached Ukraine over four campaigns.

"A few years back, Sasha Volkov, who was president of the Ukraine basketball national team and had played for me in Atlanta, called and asked if I would coach their national team. I thought it would be a great opportunity; I had never coached in Europe before."

"I did it for four summers, for the (2011) Euro Championship, the next year the qualifying for the next year’s Euro Championship, then a second Euro Championship, which we then qualified in that one for the (2014 FIBA) World Cup, which was the first time that the country had qualified for the World Cup. It was a great little run we had working with those guys."

Since the announcement of the San Antonio Spurs Gregg Popovich as the Head Coach for the USA National Team, this is the second time that USA Basketball has pulled an interim bench leader from the television booth back to the court while Popovich handles his NBA duties.

In 2017, Jeff Van Gundy led the Americans to a FIBA AmeriCup championship before steering the USA through 2019 FIBA World Cup qualification with a 10-2 record. As with Van Gundy's teams, Fratello will be working primarily with G League and overseas based players.

During the first window of the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 Qualifiers, USA will travel to San Juan to face Puerto Rico on February 20 and will then host Puerto Rico on February 23.

The 2020-21 FIBA AmeriCup qualifiers will feature 16 teams from the Americas zone divided into four groups of four teams. The top three finishing teams in each Group will earn a qualifying berth in the FIBA AmeriCup 2021.

Group A consists of Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Venezuela; Group B includes Brazil, Panama, Paraguay and Uruguay; while Group C features Canada, Cuba, Dominican Republic and U.S. Virgin Islands; and Group D includes Bahamas, Mexico, Puerto Rico and the USA.

After the February games, the next two windows of the FIBA AmeriCup 2021 Qualifiers will be played November 26-30, 2020, and February 18-22, 2021.

FIBA