No Timofey Mozgov, who underwent knee surgery in early July.
No Sasha Kaun, who just signed with the Cavaliers
No Sergey Karasev, who dislocated his patella and tore his MCL in March.
Not even Alexey Shved, the former Knick who is suffering from back pain.
Russia announced its roster for EuroBasket, and it doesn’t include a single NBA player. The team:
- Semen Antonov
- Evgeny Baburin
- Andrei Desiatnikov
- Vitaly Fridzon
- Dmitry Khvostov
- Nikita Kurbanov
- Sergey Monya
- Ruslan Pateev
- Anton Ponkrashov
- Andrey Vorontsevich
- Egor Vyaltsev
- Andrey Zubkov
Andrei Kirilenko has his work cut out for him as president of the Russian Basketball Federation. This program was in jeopardy of not even competing in EuroBasket. There are deep problems.
But the short term doesn’t look much brighter. It’s hard to see this barren roster finishing in the top seven of EuroBasket and qualifying for the 2016 Olympics (top two) or Olympic Qualifying Tournament (third through seventh).
At least this is good news for Cleveland, which won’t expose two of its players to injury risk in the tournament.