http://probasketballtalk.nbcsports.com/ ... onal-team/
There is a bill working its way through the legislature in the Philippines to make JaVale McGee a naturalized citizen so he can play for their national basketball team in time for the 2013 Asia Championships (which feed into the World Championships in 2014).
It’s still as strange as the day we first wrote about it, but the legislation is new, something we learned about from SB Nation. For clarification, we need to add this — the Philippines did not qualify for the Olympics or the pre-Olympic last-chance qualifying tournament this summer. They will not be playing in London this summer.
http://www.interaksyon.com/interaktv/bi ... mart-gilas
A bill has been filed in the House of Representatives to naturalize Denver Nuggets center JaVale McGee to make him eligible for the SMART-Gilas Pilipinas national team.
Antipolo City representative Robbie Puno filed House Bill 6169, which would make McGee a Filipino citizen. Puno, in his bill’s cover letter, cited McGee’s “remarkable track record in the United States’ professional basketball scene” as consideration for his inclusion in the SMART-Gilas program.McGee, who came over to the Philippines twice last year during the NBA lockout, has expressed interest in playing for the country.
McGee was also previously part of the pool for the United States men’s basketball team, but has never been chosen to play for Team USA, making him eligible to play for another country.Puno also filed the bill for the naturalization of Marcus Douthit, who led SMART-Gilas to a fourth-place finish in the 2011 FIBA Asia Championship, the country’s best finish in the biennial competition since 1987.
If plans to have McGee suit up for SMART-Gilas materialize, he will replace Douthit in the lineup, since FIBA allows only one naturalized player for each team. If it happens, SMART-Gilas will have an NBA-caliber center to match up with the top teams in Asia. The last two nations to win the FIBA Asia Championship, China and Iran, feature NBA players Yi Jianlian and Hamed Haddadi in their respective lineups.
