On November 24, Japan time, at the same time that Japan’s men’s basketball national team was playing a FIBA Asia Cup 2025 qualifying match in Guam, Rui Hachimura was playing at Crypto.com Arena, the home of the Los Angeles Lakers. He talked about his feelings towards the representative.
Ten days earlier, he had made a comment about the national team, saying, “There’s something about the way the Japanese national team is doing things that I’m not happy about,” and had opinions about the association’s methods and the head coach of the national team, but this interview was a follow-up to that. . It seems that he wanted to say from his own mouth what he could not say or fully explain at the press conference.
During the meeting, Hachimura once again criticized the association’s approach, declaring, “I don’t want to play for the Japan national team that follows such policies.” Hachimura’s statement is not the only one that is correct, but unless we understand what Hachimura is trying to say, we cannot move forward. I would like to think again about the background and the essence of the problem.
Discrepant history of Horvath’s continued appointment as HC
First of all, Hachimura spoke as follows about why he spoke out at this timing.
“I hadn’t heard anything until someone told me about the continuation of national team head coach Tom Horvath’s contract.In the first place, within the JBA, it was said that his contract would be terminated after the (Paris) Olympics. Since we were talking about it, I was always thinking that way.”
This comment surprised me. At a press conference to announce the continuation of Horvath’s contract, association president Yuko Miya said that they had decided to continue as Horvath before the Paris Olympics, and that they made a formal offer after the Paris Olympics, with Horvath’s intentions in mind. was. In fact, the information we heard after the Paris Olympics was that Horvath was still in charge. Why was it told to Hachimura that his contract would be terminated after the Paris Olympics?
Or where was the miscommunication that led Hachimura to think that he was told that? In any case, from Hachimura’s point of view, the fact that Horvath was leading the Japanese national team in the Asian Cup qualifiers was something he didn’t hear about, and that made him reluctant to make public statements about the national team or the association. This was the trigger.
In addition, there were a number of other incidents in which people felt that the association’s statements were not true, and their trust in the association was lost.
