Andrew Wiggins, who could become the next patron saint of Canadian basketball, predicted that “2016 is going to be a great year for Canada.”

Well, the Summer Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro are only two years away now, since the probable No. 1 pick in the June 26 NBA draft made that bold statement as a high schooler.

Still, Canada Basketball is hoping to harness Wiggins’ athletic gifts, and those of other future and current NBA players, and make a fast break to Brazil.

Senior men’s national team coach Jay Triano portrayed an upcoming 11-game European tour, from July 24-August 12, as a form of boot camp to prepare Canada for the rigours of international basketball and the Olympic qualifying tournament.

The tour was announced Friday by Canada Basketball.

Last summer, despite the presence of four NBA players in the lineup, Canada finished with a 3-4 record in the Americas zone tournament and failed to qualify for this summer’s FIBA World Cup in Spain.

Triano, the former head coach of the Toronto Raptors now working as an assistant coach with the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, said Canada needed to find an alternative this summer with the World Cup excluded as an option.

“It may end up being even better than the World Cup,” Triano said in telephone interview with The Vancouver Sun. “We’ll be playing in hostile environments -- Croatia in Croatia, Spain in Spain, Italy in Italy, Slovenia in Slovenia. We’re playing teams preparing for the World Cup. We’re a young team, with a lot of 22 and 23-year-olds. They’re very talented, but they lack international experience. We need to have more of that.”

Spain is ranked No. 2 in the world by FIBA, Turkey No. 7, Serbia No. 11, Slovenia No. 13 and Angola No. 15. All of those national teams are on the gauntlet No. 25 Canada will run this summer.

As many as seven Canadians, led by the acrobatic Wiggins, from Concord, Ont., could be picked in the two rounds of this year’s NBA draft. The addition of Wiggins, Anthony Bennett, the No. 1 pick in the 2013 NBA draft, Kelly Olynyk of the Boston Celtics, and NBA players Tristan Thompson, Cory Joseph, Joel Anthony and Andrew Nicholson to form the core of the national team has visions of Olympic medals dancing in some heads.

Triano, who coached the national men’s side to its last Olympic appearance in 2000, is hopeful of better times ahead but he remains sober-sided. A “dream team” doesn’t simply happen. It must be achieved with a nucleus of players and coaches working together over time, through summer camps and tournaments, while constantly re-dedicating itself to the overall purpose.

“It really is a great time for basketball in this country,” Triano said. “But we need to build a commitment among our players to the national team. USA basketball ran into trouble when they just put an all-star team together and didn’t get three-year commitments from their players.” (The No. 1 basketball nation went without winning the world championship from 1994 to 2006 before reversing fortunes at the quadrennial event four years ago).

The young Canadian talents expected to gather for a three-day mini-camp in Toronto, July 20-22, prior to the European tour, have all known pressure — to make the right pass, a clutch shot, a big defensive stop. But they also need the internal pressure of having to fight for a place on the team and learning what the crucible of international basketball is all about.

“When you look at last summer (the FIBA Americas qualifying tournament in Caracas), we were going up against players such Luis Scola of Argentina and Jack Martinez of the Dominican Republic,” Triano said. “Both those guys are in their 30s. They’ve played forever. We need to play as many games as we can against players like them.”

Canada lost to Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republican in the qualifying tournament last summer, denying the senior men’s team a front door entry into 2014 World Cup.

The next significant tournaments for the Canadian men’s program are the 2015 Pan-American Games in Toronto and the 2016 Olympic qualifying tournament. A site for the latter has yet to be determined.

mbeamish@vancouversun.com

Twitter.com/sixbeamers