FIBA World Cup 2023 : GERMANY are the new World Champions! (takes on the world and beats it for once...)

[Blame Rasho]

Good for Germany, undefeated for the tournament. For many years it was Dirk being a one man band, so them winning the tournament says a lot of what he did to the country.

[Stromile12]

What happened to USA basketball

[lambchop]

Zagars deserves an opportunity in NBA. Looks like a good player

To sums up the awards:
TCL Player of the Game in the Final - Franz Wagner
MVP of the tournament - Dennis Schröder
Wanda Rising Star - Josh Giddey
All Tournament Team - Dennis Schröder, Luka Doncić, Anthony Edwards, Bogdan Bogdanović, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Dillon Brooks and Franz Wagner should take the place of Doncic and Anthony Edwards

Yea Brooks needs to be on that team, but Franz didn't play enough games.

[davey_wavy]

Anyone still think a Franz/Paolo tandem isn’t getting Orlando into the post season this year?

[lambchop]

To sums up the awards:
TCL Player of the Game in the Final - Franz Wagner
MVP of the tournament - Dennis Schröder
Wanda Rising Star - Josh Giddey
Best Defensive Player - Dillon Brooks
Best Coach - Luca Banchi
All Tournament First Team - Dennis Schröder, Luka Doncić, Anthony Edwards, Bogdan Bogdanović, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
All Tournament Second Team - Simone Fontecchio, Arturs Zagars, Jonas Valančiūnas, Nikola Milutinov, Franz Wagner

Props to Banchi. I really wonder how he would do coaching a Euroleague team. Seems like an awesome coach, but overall the style of play in this tournament was still different from normal FIBA ball and Euroleague.

Edit: Also props to Zagars and Milutinov for making the 2nd team as non NBA players. Zagars is still a huge surprise to me, given where he normally plays and how struggled against top competition in club play.

[-Luke-]

Was just writing a reply to Mirotic when the thread was closed, so I copy it here:

So far most of the reactions in this thread have revealed that Serbian fans are even bigger excuse makers than Team USA and NBA only fans are. That's actually astonishing.

So far nobody agreed with you, not just Serbian fans.

Not agreeing with something and using valid points of view as to why is one thing. Making up totally lame and untrue excuses, trolling as responses, and lobbing unrelated insults are two completely different things altogether.

You said "If they don't win a gold medal at one of the three major FIBA tournaments soon, they are going to go down as the biggest chokers in the history of FIBA."

Maybe we have a different definition of choking, but they weren't favorite in the first three finals. Maybe they were favorites against Slovenia, I don't quite remember. But Slovenia played great that year. Today it was more like a 50/50 game and it turned out to be close. I wouldn't call any of that choking. And that's even ignoring all the games before the finals.

[Wargreymon]

Congrats to Germany on being the REAL World Champions. It's possible that Franz Wagner might very well end up as the best from the 2021 draft class and he showed that in the Final. I'm also excited to see if Dennis can translate this success with the Raptors and fill the shoes of Fred VanVleet. Happy for Team Canada winning our first medal ever in FIBA play. I'll be following OKC and Rockets more to see how Shai and Brooks perform.

[NoStatsGuy]

Was just writing a reply to Mirotic when the thread was closed, so I copy it here:

So far nobody agreed with you, not just Serbian fans.

Not agreeing with something and using valid points of view as to why is one thing. Making up totally lame and untrue excuses, trolling as responses, and lobbing unrelated insults are two completely different things altogether.

You said "If they don't win a gold medal at one of the three major FIBA tournaments soon, they are going to go down as the biggest chokers in the history of FIBA."

Maybe we have a different definition of choking, but they weren't favorite in the first three finals. Maybe they were favorites against Slovenia, I don't quite remember. But Slovenia played great that year. Today it was more like a 50/50 game and it turned out to be close. I wouldn't call any of that choking. And that's even ignoring all the games before the finals.

the man has never seen james harden in a closeout game

[Mirotic12]

Lol at the voters putting Edwards on the all-star five. Like no matter what, they have to do something to help promote the NBA's players. No way in hell did he deserve that.

Reminds me of when they put Dragic on the all-star five in 2013. Just ridiculous shameless promotion of totally undeserving NBA players.

[-Luke-]

Congrats to Germany on being the REAL World Champions. It's possible that Franz Wagner might very well end up as the best from the 2021 draft class and he showed that in the Final. I'm also excited to see if Dennis can translate this success with the Raptors and fill the shoes of Fred VanVleet. Happy for Team Canada winning our first medal ever in FIBA play. I'll be following OKC and Rockets more to see how Shai and Brooks perform.

For all the fun many of us made about Brooks last season (including me), he really showed up this World Cup. I have gained a lot of respect for him.

[firedavidkahn]

Uh oh, half this board about to have an aneurysm

[Mirotic12]

That is probably the worst minute of Guduric's life. Missed 3 that could tie the game, had a great chance on a 3-point play but couldn't hit the layup (to his credit, he did hit the 2 FTs) and now a turnover to boot. Poor guy

He's always been a massively overrated player. He's as average as average can be in EuroLeague, yet has often been considered some great player for whatever reason.

[Mirotic12]

Wow... basketball is just top-10 in Germany right? Not evwn top 5?

This forum is just full of posts about how basketball is extremely unpopular in Germany. And even links to data that supposedly proves that. It's complete and total BS. As someone that has followed European basketball leagues for a long time, I can assure you that Germany is definitely one of the European countries where basketball is most popular.

There arenas are almost always packed in every single European game, no matter what team is playing, no matter which European league, and it's been that way for years and years and years. It's a big myth that no one in Germany likes basketball. A really big myth.

[Mirotic12]

Sabonis is not the only key player. Grigonis is by far the best guard of theirs, Ulanovas and Butkevicius are two main SFs, Kulboka potentially could start at PF, and Lekavicius is the only decent back up pg they have on paper. So, potentially, 4 starters are missing and number 1 guy from the bench?

Man, I really don't get your fascination with Grigonis. Dude was an absolute disaster with Panathinaikos.

[mikejames23]

Congrats to Germany. Dirk must be so happy right now.

[Wingy]

Condolence.

You got me! But, it’s that I care more about other posters acting like an ass when I’m trying to have a decent human conversation than the US team’s losses. Carry on.

That’s how little we give a damn.

Except we all know this place would be flooded with "beat you with our B team" had the US won gold.

The US by far was missing the most talent. But a bunch of that talent is also older in Lebron, KD, Curry, and Butler. The guys we saw this tourney, or looking around, are just not on their levels. So once they are gone, the gap narrows further.

And that's OK. It's a global game. It's good for basketball. Just like hockey not being always dominated by Canada.

Anyone coming to gloat like that is generally going to represent those with lower IQ, so I’d hope the rest of the world won’t be offended by the worst of us. They exist in every country. Very much like hockey, good analogy.

[Mirotic12]

To sums up the awards:
TCL Player of the Game in the Final - Franz Wagner
MVP of the tournament - Dennis Schröder
Wanda Rising Star - Josh Giddey
Best Defensive Player - Dillon Brooks
Best Coach - Luca Banchi
All Tournament First Team - Dennis Schröder, Luka Doncić, Anthony Edwards, Bogdan Bogdanović, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander
All Tournament Second Team - Simone Fontecchio, Arturs Zagars, Jonas Valančiūnas, Nikola Milutinov, Franz Wagner

All new awards, and it's a bit over the top for a 2 week tournament. The MVP and All-star 5 was more than satisfactory as awards. It's starting to look a bit cartoonish with all of that for a 2 week tournament. Like ESPN kind of nonsense.

Although the player of the game of the final has always been there and isn't counted as an actual award. Just a player of the game.

[-Luke-]

Wow... basketball is just top-10 in Germany right? Not evwn top 5?

This forum is just full of posts about how basketball is extremely unpopular in Germany. And even links to data that supposedly proves that. It's complete and total BS. As someone that has followed European basketball leagues for a long time, I can assure you that Germany is definitely one of the European countries where basketball is most popular.

There arenas are almost always packed in every single European game, no matter what team is playing, no matter which European league, and it's been that way for years and years and years. It's a big myth that no one in Germany like basketball. A really big myth.

It is definitely true that there is a very loyal fan base, but overall basketball does not play such a big role (although I hope that will change since today). It's more like a numbers game. A country with 80+ million people will fill arenas even if the sports are less popular. So all in all I would say more than 95% of the people have no idea about basketball, but the fan bases are very loyal.

For example, about ten years ago or so there was this Dirk Nowitzki movie in the cinema, "The Perfect Shot". It was hard to even find a movie theatre that showed it and nobody wanted to go see the movie with me because nobody I know in real life watches basketball. They know Dirk from the tv but nobody really knows what he meant to basketball. There were three or four other people in the movie theatre when I watched it.

The final today was the only game they showed on tv and even now after the title this embarrassment of a soccer national team is dominating the news.

[Mirotic12]

It is definitely true that there is a very loyal fan base, but overall basketball does not play such a big role (although I hope that will change since today). It's more like a numbers game. A country with 80+ million people will fill arenas even if the sports are less popular. So all in all I would say more than 95% of the people have no idea about basketball, but the fan bases are very loyal.

For example, about ten years ago or so there was this Dirk Nowitzki movie in the cinema, "The Perfect Shot". It was hard to even find a movie theatre that showed it and nobody wanted to go see the movie with me because nobody I know in real life watches basketball. They know Dirk from the tv but nobody really knows what he meant to basketball. There were three or four other people movie theatre when I watched it.

Yeah, but people from like USA or outside Europe that don't follow basketball are asking here, and everyone is just like "no one watches basketball or cares about it in Germany", etc.

We can argue about percentages, but the fact is that way more people are watching basketball games in those German arenas than they are in Greece, Serbia, Lithuania, which the same threads here are saying "basketball is so popular there". Yeah, but in Germany I guarantee the attendance is way, way higher.

So it's painting a very, very misleading picture of the level of basketball popularity in Germany to people here that don't understand the nuances of it.

[Tim_Hardawayy]

Lol at the voters putting Edwards on the all-star five. Like no matter what, they have to do something to help promote the NBA's players. No way in hell did he deserve that.

Reminds me of when they put Dragic on the all-star five in 2013. Just ridiculous shameless promotion of totally undeserving NBA players.

Who do you root for, you come across as really whiny, would be easier to understand where the bitchy attitude comes from