With this tournament, 2014 provided three opportunities (the Centrobasket, the FIBA Basketball World Cup and now the Central American and Caribbean Games) for teams like Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic and Mexico to have official FIBA international competitions allowing them to distribute their talent (player, coaching, etc.) and giving them experience in order to assess where each and everyone of them stand at the different levels of play.
 
One can only national federations take advantage of the situation and plan accordingly to common sense. And I say common sense because at first glance, anybody with knowledge of international basketball at the moment can quickly tell you what should be done in each of those tournaments. It is simple. For the World Cup, you obviously go with the best available talent you’ve got, for the Centrobasket you take the-ready-to-contribute-up-and-comers (always making sure you have a good enough team to qualify for the continentals), and for games like the Central American and Caribbean, you take the projects…those talented young players that can use the experience in the international stage to help forward their development.
 
Sadly, this has not happened. To quickly go through the rosters of the participating teams in this Central American and Caribbean Games is actually a very depressing endeavor. No national federation got the memo.

The names bring back many memories, and that's not a good thing. There's  Larry Ayuso and Christian Dalmau as centrepieces of the Puerto Rican team traveling to Veracruz. Dominican Republic has Jack Michael Martinez and Edward Santana. And Panama has a Toñito Garcia (yes, Toñito Garcia). You can go on and on. The teams in this competition have missed the point.

And I don't fault the players. I completely understand if you are a 39 year old like Dalmau and you receive the invitation to wear your national team jersey for one last time...no is not an option. But the Central American and Caribbean Games are not that tournament. You know what Dalmau can give your national team. That question has been answered. This tournament has to be taken for what it is: a platform.

This is the competition where you take 12 questions, 12 players of which you don't really know what they can give, but that have enough talent to where you want to know the answer.

Julio Lamas did it beautifully in this year's Odesur Games (the same kind of competition for South American countries). He took 12 young talented players and gave them the stage for them to grow. In the process he also had the opportunity to coach them during practice and see work ethic, basketball IQ, leadership qualities, etc. He had some questions with these kids he needed to answer and used the tournament for it.

Why didn't the Central American and Caribbean teams copy that formula?

With the new competition system starting in 2017 (in this cycle), national teams are going to need more depth in their talent pool and these opportunities cannot be ignored.

Maybe we'll enjoy the curtain call from some of these veterans but the context is not lost on me. Some may say that medals are important for olympic committees and that there might have been pressure in this decisions, others might point to the date and unavailability of some players. I say that even with those obstacles, there was a way.

It is a shame to see no long-term plan from these national federations. This was an enormous opportunity.

The horror! The horror!