When American Rick Turner was hired to lead Jamaica’s national basketball team in December 2019, his main goal was to make it a real contender on the international stage. Six years on, the former National Basketball Association (NBA) executive is closer than ever to making that dream a reality.

The ‘Jamrockers’, in their quest of reaching their first ever FIBA World Cup, are in a great position to advance to the final round of the Americas Qualifiers after beating Puerto Rico twice in their opening group games of the first round.

Despite being the lowest-ranked team in the group, the Jamaican men, without Miami Heat star Norman Powell, defied the odds in San Juan, stunning Puerto Rico with consecutive wins to surge to four points and draw level with Canada at the top of the standings. The top three teams from the group advance to the last round.

With Jamaica on the verge of the next round, Turner says the team has shown the region what they’re truly capable of.

“I don’t think Jamaicans run short of confidence, so that was never really an issue, but I do think that these two games just showed us that we belong and that the things we’ve been doing and been talking about were not just pie-in-the-sky wishes but they were things that as a staff and an organisation we believed in,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“The players we have, in order to be able to play at the level that these guys play, they’re all confident young men. So from that aspect, that’s not lacking, but it just reaffirms the fact that we belong here and that we think we can do great things.”

It’s a remarkable growth in Jamaica’s basketball programme which was at a standstill during Turner’s first few years as coach, mainly due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

However, their participation in World Cup qualifying was a stroke of luck, which Turner remains grateful for.

“I had a meeting with [Jamaica Basketball Association] President [Paulton] Gordon last February where each of us were expressing our frustration about the purgatory that we found ourselves in where we couldn’t play because we weren’t ranked high enough, and we couldn’t get ranked high enough because we couldn’t play,” Turner recalled. “So we came up with some ideas on what we could do to try to figure it out, and literally two hours after our meeting we got a letter from FIBA that said we were eligible to play in the pre-qualifiers.

“So in some ways it’s just sort of lucky that we were able to get back into the mix. Then once that happened, it was up to us to make it worthwhile. I’m not surprised about what we’re doing. This is everything we expected to do. But things don’t always happen at the pace that you want them to happen. And just the fact that we’re where we are now is super gratifying.”

While thrilled by the team’s journey so far, Turner isn’t planning to be comfortable, and they plan to see out their objective.

“We did win two games in Puerto Rico that we probably weren’t the favourites for in either one of those games, but the road now just seems even more difficult,” he said.

“So you’d think you can kind of relax a little bit and pat yourself on the back for a minute, but that’s just not the case at all. We play a team in The Bahamas that has their back up against the wall — these are must-win games for them coming up in February — and then we play Canada, who’s just one of the best teams in the world. So we love what we did, but it just gets harder from here.”

Turner, though, says he’s confident the team will continue to progress due to the will and commitment from the players.

“You’ve got to give credit to our guys because we don’t have the experience that teams like Puerto Rico, Canada, and The Bahamas have, so we had to really try to pack as much into a short amount of time as we could. It was seven days in Boca leading up to the [prequalifiers] in Mexico and then it was just three days in Puerto Rico leading up to those two games,” he said.

“From a coaching aspect, you don’t want to overcomplicate things, you want to try to keep things simple, but at the same time, you have to give them enough to be prepared. It’s a balance, but again, our players just were focused from the time they landed in San Juan, knowing what the job was and knowing the importance of putting their best foot forward against a team that was really, really good.”

Jamaica is expected to host The Bahamas on February 26 and Canada on March 1.

Jamaica’s Tyran De Lattibeaudiere hangs on the rim after a slam dunk in the team’s 97-92 win over Puerto Rico in the first round of FIBA Americas World Cup qualifying in San Juan, Puerto Rico on Monday December 1. (Photo: FIBA)

Head coach of Jamaica’s basketball team, Rick Turner (Photo: JABA)