Kingston - The Jamaica Basketball Association appointed veteran US coach Rick Turner last month as coach and coordinator of their National Men’s Basketball Program, aiming to develop their team up to the world level.

Turner has a great professional resumé that includes experience as an assistant at the University of Washington (NCAA) and as coach of teams in the Continental Basketball Association (CBA) and the American Basketball Association (ABA). He was also trainer of the Chinese Basketball Association's team Shanxi Zhongyu and worked with the NBA’s Seattle Supersonics.

Before his career really took off, Turner had led the Jump Ball Basketball program in Kingston for 19 years — the main project for the development of basketball in Jamaica. This initiative offers free practice clinics to the nation’s children — including Haiti — during the summer and offers coaching seminars.

“I am so excited about this opportunity and the chance to be a part of a leadership team that puts Jamaican Basketball on the map, on the international stage,” said Turner in a press release. “From the moment I first walked off the plane in Kingston back in 1999, I fell in love with the country and the incredible Jamaican people who have always treated me with genuine kindness and respect. The passion of the Jamaican people, the knowledge of the game, along with the outstanding athletic talent made me realize right away that there was great potential for a world-class program.”

The association has a long-term plan and proposes as short-term goals the qualification to the 2023 FIBA Basketball World Cup and the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris, France. These are to stages that the national team established in 1962 has yet to experience.

“After talking about our shared interests and sharing our visions for the program with each other, we decided that adding Coach Turner to our team was something important moving forward,” said the Association's President, Paulton Gordon. "We are comfortable with him. I think he has a wealth of experience to bring the kind of value that we need," he said.

As part of their development plan for last year, Basketball Jamaica also celebrated the second edition of the Jamaica Classic — a tournament for first-division collegiate teams of the United States. As part of the activities that took place in Montego Bay, the invited teams offered basketball clinics to more than 90 Jamaican kids. The competition also served to showcase the nation as a pro-basketball destination and to promote the sport’s popularity among the island's residents.

This year the tournament was dedicated to legendary NBA player and Jamaica native Patrick Ewing.

FIBA