TWO NBA coaches, Chris Clunie and Becky Bonner, arrived in Barbados on Monday for the DIGICEL Grassroots Basketball JumpStart Clinic being held on island this week.

They will conduct the three-day clinic which offers aspiring young local basketball players the opportunity to train under their tutelage and improve their game.

CEO of Digicel, Johnny Ingle, welcomed the coaches noting, “The clinic will be launched on Wednesday and this is an exciting time for us. To have not one but two NBA coaches here to work with our young and enthusiastic players is fantastic. We are definitely looking forward to the days of intense training ahead for the lucky participants.”

Clunie, Associate Director, International Basketball Operations with the NBA, facilitates the global development basketball outreach platforms, including coaching clinics, grassroots clinics, and elite camps. He also serves as an operations liaison when NBA teams travel internationally or when international teams travel to the United States.

He has helped to organise and execute numerous programmes and events, including Basketball without Borders, NBA 3X, NBA Global Games, Jr. NBA/WNBA, NIKE Americas and Asia Pacific Team Camps, and U.S. State Department Sports Envoy programmes.

Clunie, who works with the international players in the NBA as well as with all the global basketball federations and leagues, has also conducted events in numerous countries including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Spain and Britain.

Bonner, who will be assisting Clunie, has spent the last two summers working with the NBA’s Basketball Without Borders programme and enters her fourth season as Director of Basketball Operations for the University of Louisville women’s basketball programme.