KINGSTON, Ja­maica — Chica­go Bulls shoot­ing guard Nor­man Pow­ell strong­ly be­lieves that a FI­BA el­i­gi­bil­i­ty rule is pre­vent­ing oth­er top tal­ent­ed bas­ket­ballers from rep­re­sent­ing Ja­maica on the in­ter­na­tion­al stage.

The 33-year-old Pow­ell, who rep­re­sent­ed Ja­maica ear­li­er this year at the FI­BA World Cup Qual­i­fy­ing, has main­tained that oth­er play­ers from the NBA are in­ter­est­ed in play­ing for the Caribbean is­land.

How­ev­er, un­der FI­BA reg­u­la­tions a play­er born in an­oth­er coun­try who wish­es to rep­re­sent the na­tion of a par­ent or grand­par­ent must ob­tain cit­i­zen­ship or a pass­port from that coun­try be­fore turn­ing 18.

Pow­ell be­lieves Ja­maica would be far more com­pet­i­tive if those play­ers were el­i­gi­ble to rep­re­sent the coun­try, as it ruled out sev­er­al po­ten­tial suit­ors.

“A lot of the guys that have Ja­maican de­scent or her­itage are be­ing pe­nalised for some­thing that their par­ents didn’t do, or their grand­par­ents moved away from Ja­maica.

“They didn’t know the na­tion­al team was a thing, since it’s been 15 years since we (na­tion­al team) first played a game. So, we’re try­ing to work with FI­BA to get it changed or al­tered,” Pow­ell told Fade­Away World in a re­cent in­ter­view.

“It’s putting a damper on what Ja­maica is able to do, with be­ing able to com­pete at a very high lev­el be­cause a lot of these guys’ par­ents didn’t get their dual cit­i­zen­ship. That’s tough.”

Pow­ell said he was work­ing with the Ja­maica Bas­ket­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (JBA) and FI­BA in an ef­fort to have the rule amend­ed.

Af­ter a promis­ing start in the FI­BA Qual­i­fiers, Ja­maica fal­tered against The Ba­hamas and Cana­da and were elim­i­nat­ed from con­tention.

While Pow­ell said the team must as­sess its per­for­mance in the qual­i­fiers and make the nec­es­sary ad­just­ments ahead of fu­ture cam­paigns, he said hav­ing ac­cess to some of the NBA tal­ent linked to Ja­maica could make a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence.

“It’s about re­tool­ing and see­ing what we need to do. We have a lot of in­ter­est from NBA guys; Devin Vas­sell, the Thomp­son twins (Amen and Ausar), the Cham­pag­nie broth­ers (Justin and Ju­lian), Isa­iah Stew­art and a cou­ple of oth­er guys that want to play.

“So it’s about fig­ur­ing out how we can get as many NBA guys and top-tal­ent­ed guys that are a part of the team,” Pow­ell said. (CMC)