Drew Gooden won't be playing for Finland this summer

You all, like I, were probably surprised to hear an ESPN announcer suggest Drew Gooden would play for Finland in the 2014 FIBA World Cup last month. The hope indeed was for Gooden to receive dual US-Finnish citizenship in time to join the club for the tournament.

Alas, that's not going to happen, according to Kyle Weidie of Truth About It:

The Finnish basketball federation tried to fast-track the process of obtaining citizenship that can take months to years in order to get Gooden eligible to play in Spain but was unable to complete the necessary paperwork.

Jorge Castillo of the Washington Post has more details:

But the situation was complicated because Gooden played for Team USA in a tournament in Brazil in 2000 while attending Kansas and he had never applied for dual citizenship before. He waited until this spring to begin the paperwork process - he recalled starting on it during the Wizards' first-round playoff series victory over the Bulls - because he held out hope of representing the United States again.

Gooden's mother is from Finland, but he never officially lived in the country, so he needed the dual citizenship to be eligible to play. Alas, the paperwork wasn't completed in time.

This means that Nene is the only current Wizard that'll play in the tournament. Kevin Seraphin wasn't cleared to play for France and John Wall and Bradley Beal were obviously cut from Team USA. (Tomas Satoransky is suiting up for the Czech Republic in Eurobasket 2015 qualifiers, but they didn't make the FIBA World Cup).