MEXICO CITY

Canada has been producing an unprecedented amount of NBA players in recent years, but that advantage is about to be negated.

FIBA, basketball’s governing body, announced Friday a number of changes that will impact Olympic and World Cup qualifying going forward.

There now will be more qualifying windows, but two of those qualifying competitions will be held in November and February, meaning no NBA players will compete. Only the USA has more NBAers, so Canada will lose an edge it really enjoyed for the first time at this FIBA Americas tournament, where the roster was almost entirely comprised of NBA players, while the competition had 0-2 of them per team.

FIBA believes the new system will actually encourage more of the games biggest starts to suit up for their national teams, because they won’t be called upon as often (no longer at FIBA Americas or equivalent regional tournament, but only at the Olympics and World Cup).

This will all start in 2017 and there will be no competitions at all in 2018, followed by the World Cup in 2019 (in an effort to get the hoops Cup away from the soccer World Cup), the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, the 2021 continental championships, another year off in 2022 and then the 2023 World Cup.

“The current system cannot stand long-term,” FIBA’s Patrick Koller said at a news conference before Canada took on Venezuela on Friday.

“We have less and less players participating in our major tournaments. It’s just getting to a point where it’s impossible.”

Koller pointed out that 15 eligible NBA players didn’t compete here (even with Canada’s stacked roster), a huge jump from the six who skipped this event several years ago.

Long-term, FIBA says the changes will help the growth of the sport. There will be more home games in countries, including Canada, and more players will compete on the biggest stage.

“I think it’s a good thing for Canada,” said Michele O’Keefe, president and CEO of Canada Basketball and a member of FIBA’s central board.

“One of our biggest challenges we have in our country is misalignment of our sport. What I think this allows us to do is have more creative conversations with other basketball deliverers, whether it be the CIS, or our athletes who play in Europe, or the D-League, the new (Raptors) 905 team. I think it allows us to have a conversation with a bunch of people that we’re now developing a whole new level of athletes.”

But O’Keefe admits that Canada gets the short end of the stick at least a little bit.

“You can probably say Canada, the U.S. and France are the three most affected countries with this, but I’ve had a lot of conversations with USA Basketball and we’re looking at it from a growth perspective because we’ll still have the two windows where our NBA stars can play and shine and we know they’ll always be on the floor for the World Cup and for the Olympics but I think this allows us to develop a whole new level of depth,” O’Keefe said, adding that now, seven teams from the Americas will qualify for the World Cup, up from the current five.

That means that even if Canada brings lesser talent to the non-NBA windows, it will still have two more chances to qualify that didn’t previously exist.

O’Keefe believes Canada has plenty of talent that will now get more of an opportunity to show what it can do.

“Yes, we have amazing NBA players, but the next level of athletes, the guys who were at the Pan Am Games, those guys are still really strong and I think we’ll be just fine. It will be tough competition, but I think we’ll be successful,” she said.

And what of players balking at playing for Canada knowing that they will be replaced by the cream of the crop for the biggest competitions?

“It’s always a conversation I think that if we frame it properly and we show them that there are opportunities to come out of those tournaments with exposure and opportunities to get contracts, whether it’s in Europe or possibly they get scouted by an NBA coach or GM,” she said.

“I think they’ll have an opportunity to get a contract where they wouldn’t otherwise have those opportunities.”