Young Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray on Wednesday promised to play for Canada at men's Olympic Qualifying Tournaments in June 2020 to help his country make the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo.

"Playing for my country is always an honour [sic] and I want to take the step and leadership role to commit to @canadabasketball this summer. I want to play my part to help push our team into the Olympics and compete at the highest world stage. Let's go Canada," posted Murray on Twitter.

After Murray made his commitment, the other young guard of Canada, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of the Oklahoma City Thunder also wrote on Twitter: "I've known and made a promise to myself that representing my country is something I will continue to do and as my bro @BeMore27 publicly announced his commitment, I too will be there to do my best to help @CanBball get to Tokyo!"

The Canadian men's national basketball team have missed the Olympics for a long time – the last time they attended the event was in Sydney 2000.

They had the chance of securing early qualification at the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China earlier this year. The country's basketball association recruited 17 NBA players for the national team training camp but in the end, all of them chose to quit, leaving their national team humiliated at the World Cup.

22-year-old Murray was selected by the Nuggets with the No. 7 pick in the 2016 NBA Draft. He kept improving his ability to score since he joined the league and could put down 18.2 points per game last season. In his NBA playoffs debut, Murray played 14 games and could get 21.3 points on average.

Having considered him as a foundation player, Denver signed a five-year, 170-million-U.S.-dollar contract Murray this summer.