PORTLAND, Ore. – Bring on the world stars.
Adding 7-foot center Joel Embiid of Cameroon, who attends The Rock School (Gainesville, Fla.), and Lithuanian guard Tomas Dimsa, who plays for the professional club team Zalgiris-Sabonio in Lithuania, while previously announced guard Mario Hezonja (Croatia/Regal FC Barcelona) has withdrawn, the roster for the 2013 World Select Team that will compete in the 16th annual Nike Hoop Summit Saturday at the Rose Garden.
The Nike Hoop Summit features America’s top, senior high-school players versus a World Select Team featuring many of the world’s best players age 19-years-old or younger.
Embiid will play college basketball at the University of Kansas next season. A soccer and volleyball player in Cameroon, Embiid played basketball for the first time at the start of 2011, and his first organized game late that year after moving to the United States. Having been spotted at a basketball camp in Africa by former Montverde Academy alumnus and current NBA player Luc Richard Mbah a Moute, Embiid attended Montverde in Florida, before transferring to The Rock School.
Dimsa is in the middle of a successful season with his club team Zalgiris-Sabonio which plays in the NKL, the second tier professional league in Lithuania. Dimsa is averaging 11.6 points, 3.2 rebounds and 2.1 assists per game for his club this season and also has international experience dating back to 2010, when he won a silver medal with Lithuania at the U16 European Championship in Montenegro. A year later, he also was part of the Lithuanian team at the U18 European Championship in Poland.
Suiting up alongside Embiid and Dimsa for the World Team are: heralded prep forward Andrew Wiggins (Canada/Huntington Prep, W.Va.), who returns for his second Hoop Summit appearance and is the No. 1 senior prospect by Blue Star Media, having led the World Team with 20 points in an 84-75 victory in 2012; Gabriel Deck (Argentina/Quimsa Athletic Association Santiago del Estero); Dante Exum(Australia/Australian Institute of Sport); Nikola Ivanovic (Montenegro/KK Buducnost);Mouhammadou Jaiteh (France/Maritime Boulogne); Livio Jean-Charles (France/ASVEL Lyon-Villeurbanne); Sergey Karasev (Russia/Triumph Lyubertsy), who earned a bronze medal with Russia at the 2012 Olympics; Dennis Schröder (Germany/New Yorker Phantoms); and Karl Towns, Jr. (Dominican Republic/St. Joseph, Metuchen, N.J.), who has verbally committed to Kentucky in 2014.
For a third-straight year, Roy Rana will lead the World Team at the 2013 Nike Hoop Summit. Rana is a seven-year veteran of Canada Basketball who was appointed head coach of Canada’s Junior National Team in 2012 and led the team to a bronze medal in the FIBA Americas U18 Championship in Brazil. The World Team assistant coach will be Serbia’s Marin Sedlacek, who is making his 13th Nike Hoop Summit appearance.
The World Team seeks to repeat its 2012 success, when it defeated the USA 84-75 in front of a Rose Garden crowd of 10,666 and a national television audience. Overall, the United States holds an 11-4 advantage in the Nike Hoop Summit.
An incredible 140 players who have participated in the Nike Hoop Summit have been drafted by NBA teams, including six No. 1 overall picks.
The list of World alumni includes: Dirk Nowitzki, Tony Parker, Serge Ibaka, Yi Jianlian,Luis Scola, Bismack Biyombo,Nicolas Batum,Andrea Bargnani, Omri Casspi, Enes Kanterand Vladimir Radmanovic.
