Svetislav Pesic touches on Jokic's World Cup availability, naturalized players issue / News - Basketnews.com

Svetislav Pesic talked about the contacts he's had with Serbian players, most notably Nikola Jokic, ahead of the World Cup in August. He also revealed the one player who's been ruled out and addressed the issue of Serbia potentially adding a naturalized player in the near future.

Credit: Michael Schwartz/dpa Credit Michael Schwartz/dpa

The Serbian national team has learned the names of its rivals in the first stage of the World Cup.

The Balkan country will play against China, Puerto Rico and South Sudan, while in the second stage, they will be joining a group that includes Angola, the Dominican Republic, the Philippines and Italy.

Serbia's potential rivals in the quarter-finals, at least on paper, are the USA, Greece and Lithuania.

"As far as the team's composition is concerned, there will be no major changes compared to the team that played at the EuroBasket," head coach Svetislav Pesic told SportKlub.

"Much will depend on the preparation and the injury list. Aleksa Avramovic suffered a (season-ending) injury, but he hopes to be able to play at the World Cup. Vladimir Lucic will definitely not be part of the team, and there is no need to talk about how much he means to us," said Pesic and continued:

"I hope there will be no more injuries, the end of the season is coming. Aleksej Pokusevski is back, he will practice until the beginning of July," the Serbian tactician continued.

He then referred to Nikola Jokic's status, revealing that he and the director of the Serbian national teams Dragan Tarlac had a discussion with the Nuggets' big man.

"We will see how far he will go in the NBA playoffs. Nikola is happy in the national team, he wants to play, but we have to wait a bit," he said.

"We are also waiting for Bogdan Bogdanovic, who is recovering from a hard season".

As more and more countries are adding naturalized players in the mix, with Greece being the latest one to do so with Thomas Walkup, the question is whether there will there be a foreign player in Serbia.

"At this moment that won't happen," Pesic clarified.

"If I invite (Kevin) Punter, then I will also have to invite someone from Crvena Zvezda, so that there would be no conflict," he joked.

"I don't see reinforcements for the national team in foreign players at this moment. I hope we won't need foreigners in the team, but I don't rule out the possibility of that happening in the following period," he concluded.

Subscribe to BN+ and get access to exclusive content.