Blake Griffin, 4 Warriors to take part in Team USA minicamp
— -- Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin will participate in next month's USA Basketball minicamp in Las Vegas and hopes to play in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, a league source told ESPN.
Griffin was forced to withdraw from last year's Team USA training camp for the FIBA World Cup because he was advised by doctors to give a back injury more time to heal.
Griffin was also forced to withdraw from the 2012 team that competed in the Summer Olympics in London after he stepped on the foot of Washington Wizards guard John Wall during a workout and tore the meniscus in his left knee.
A source told ESPN's Calvin Watkins that Houston Rockets shooting guard James Harden will also attend the minicamp. Harden, who played a key role on the World Cup team last season, led the NBA with 2,981 minutes played during the regular season.
Sources told ESPN.com's Marc Stein, meanwhile, that the newly crowned champion Golden State Warriors expect to have four representatives at the minicamp: Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Harrison Barnes.
Curry and Thompson were key members of the Team USA squad that won the 2014 FIBA World Cup in Spain. Green and Barnes, as ESPN.com reported earlier this month, are recent invitees to the minicamp, which USA Basketball chairman Jerry Colangelo has billed as more of a "reunion" for USAB players, coaches and staffers than a competitive basketball event.
Sources told Stein that Memphis Grizzlies guard Mike Conley has also accepted his recent invitation to attend the camp, with Washington's Bradley Beal, Utah's Gordon Hayward and Portland's Mason Plumlee (who played on the World Cup team last summer) also planning to attend.
The San Antonio Express-News, meanwhile, reported Sunday that newly re-signed star swingman Kawhi Leonard will make himself available for the camp after he bypassed national team invites the past two summers.
Although USAB has scheduled two days of noncontact workouts and an intrasquad scrimmage on Aug. 13 that will better resemble an All-Star Game, Colangelo has informed the 34 players who were in the USAB player pool as of last September, as well as new invitees, that attendance at the Vegas minicamp is mandatory for any player who wants to be considered for the team that will play in the 2016 Olympics.
The New York Post reported last week that Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, to that end, plans to attend the minicamp even though he's unlikely to participate in any basketball activities so soon after knee surgery. Anthony would be attending purely to state his availability for the 2016 squad.
Other top players who, like Anthony, are still recovering from injuries but could be camp attendees include Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant, Indiana's Paul George and Cleveland's Kevin Love.
