FIBA World Cup 2023 part 2 SEMIS (USA vs GERMANY : SERBIA vs CANADA) poll added

[baldur]

If basketball is getting more popular around the world than ever, it's because of NBA, not corrupt, inefficient, useless FiBA.

[durden_tyler]

Both of you are correct. The "big" leagues and tournaments definitely has value for the younger generation. They follow the NBA on social media, maybe get to a game or two in a World Cup. These are valuable times they get to spend being exposed to the sport. Locally, there has been a dip in interest of basketball basically because on how our local league suck. More children/youth are into Esports and seeing there is value (an actual career maybe) there and this current generation does not care if they know how to dribble a ball. i am pretty sure other countries have similar basketball vs Other Stuff situations.

[greekman]

canada's missing 2 of their 3 best players and shaedon sharpe, so it's not like they're at full strength

[GYK]

A 34ppg margin of victory for the 3-0 start for the C Team is pretty impressive. But to be fair most of these games have been blowouts. Still C team.

[Mamba81p]

Not sure why anyone would like this tournament, at least with this format. There is no game worth watching tonight. 32 teams is just too much, if Fiba really wants to make this tournament interesting, reduce the number of teams to 24 max. Basketball is just not that popular to warrant so many teams.
In the old Olympics group phase format there were 4-5 great teams in a group of 6 which guarantees 1-2 great games everyday. They **** that up, but they should at least get this right

I agreed first phase is incredibly boring. We got nothing really interesting beside Latvia. But second phase and so on will get interesting.

Personally, I like there are more nations, they try to increase exposure, but I wonder, with some of these nations, does this thing and their team results even make sports news. Some nations here are simply not into basketball.

Like I heard Rugby WC is also going on, but how many people beside English colonies know about that? I remember Lithuanian team won some kind of rugby euro champ once, and it later made the news, because their victory didn't even make national sports news. Basically it was news because it wssnt news at all. I wonder is this basketball thing is the same to same countries.

Rugby and handball are 2 sports I watch closely. They both bring a lot of crap teams into their world cups/championship. None of them have been able to grow the sport. In rugby it's the same countries: UK, Ireland, France, and the 3 traditional countries in the south. Argentina is the only one that is a new entry. They are trying to make a thing with Italy and Japan.
Handball is basically Europe only with Brazil/Argentina showing some potential + SK's women team.

Basketball on the the other hand is growing all around at a pretty impressive pace , regardless of whether they have a decent team. Having a home grown star or a competitive team definitely helps a lot, but those can come once the sport is becoming more popular.
The big difference between basketball and the rest is the NBA and it's stars.

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

[AdagioPace]

[
Do you think the sport grew so much in the last 40 years because of FIBA and the world cup?

I would say the 1992 dream team is the main reason behind the progress was made in the last 3 decades. Basketball is more popular than ever in countries like Romania, Bulgaria and other European countries even though they have no shot at making the world cup.

You are proving my point of the importance of being included in these tournaments.

No current generation kids know no about or even care about the US team 30 years ago.

They probably even make it a point to not know.

It’s the current stars, the current Euro stars and playing on such a big stage that will keep inspiring new generations.

It's irrelevant if they know about that team or not. That was the biggest boost basketball got internationally. I am sure there are kids that didn't see magic and bird play, but that doesn't change the fact that they are the ones who saved the NBA.

individual federations are not going to grow just because some individual player every 20 years goes to play in the NBA or because kids follow NBA on social media (NBA popularity as a main fuel to national teams results is ridiculous). Coaches academies, grassroots movements, local championships (affiliated with the federation and with FIBA) and finally FIBA tournaments. To be fair, the NBA has also invested in Africa recently.

[Genjuro]

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

I'm not sure I understand you here, but Lithuania is the country with the longest tradition out of those, followed by Serbia. And Spain has a longest tradition than Greece. In Spain basketball became truly popular following the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, although It was already quite notorious during the 70s.

[AdagioPace]

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

I'm not sure I understand you here, but Lithuania is the country with the longest tradition out of those, followed by Serbia. And Spain has a longest tradition than Greece. In Spain basketball became truly popular following the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, although It was already quite notorious during the 70s.

I would also add the NBA was not even easy to watch in Europe in the 90s. In Italy for example it was broadcasted first for free on obscure channels between '90 and '96 then it moved to the pay-per-view world which was something only few families had.
(Mike D'Antoni brought some NBA experience in the 80s italian basketball, even though we already had great results with national team)

Today the NBA can reach every little bedroom of course. I would say the NBA generates dreams, but then the federation that assists you must be good enough, and this doesn't even matter if there aren't even good infrastructures where you grow up. It's a very complex interaction between the private and public sphere.

[Ville5]

By the way, Latvia won the very first EuroBasket in 1935. Spain was the runner-up.

[Phreak50]

NZ vs Mexico just starting and the ESPN guy said the stakes are still high for the teams to push for the Olympic qualifying tournament.

I thought only one Oceania team (confirmed now to be Australia) could make it and NZ are now out?

[ROballer]

NZ vs Mexico just starting and the ESPN guy said the stakes are still high for the teams to push for the Olympic qualifying tournament.

I thought only one Oceania team (confirmed now to be Australia) could make it and NZ are now out?

Australia made the Olympics directly.

New Zealand is pushing for the Qualifying Tournament, there is a best Asia/Oceania spot left.

Assuming Japan makes the Olympics directly themselvez as the Asian direct berth, New Zealand can make the qualifying tourney if they take care of business in their games.


And yeah, because some teams qualify directly for the Olympics via the continental spots, and some qualify directly for the Qualifying Tournament, I think there are still like 6 spots left from this consolation 17-32 group stage.

Meaning even Finland could make the Olympics Qualifying tournament even if they didn't qualify for the main group stage and are out of the top 16.

[mcmurphy]

Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

Greece, Serbia and Lithuania don't have a long tradition??


in 70s-80s
galis-giannakis,... in Greece
cosic-dalipagic-kikanovic,... in Serbia
zalgiris kaunas of sabonis-chomicius-kurtinaitis in Lithuania

[lambchop]

Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

Greece, Serbia and Lithuania don't have a long tradition??


in 70s-80s
galis-giannakis,... in Greece
cosic-dalipagic-kikanovic,... in Serbia
zalgiris kaunas of sabonis-chomicius-kurtinaitis in Lithuania

I think he's saying that precisely those countries have a long tradition, therefore, the popularity of the sport has been a given for quite some time now. And then he mentioned Germany as an example of a country with less of a basketball tradition, but where NBA players have been produced lately and he's linking that to increased popularity compared to 2 or 3 decades ago.

[Phreak50]

New Zealand is pushing for the Qualifying Tournament, there is a best Asia/Oceania spot left.

Assuming Japan makes the Olympics directly themselvez as the Asian direct berth, New Zealand can make the qualifying tourney if they take care of business in their games.

Ok cool, thank you.

I knew there were qualifying games for the Olympics but didn’t think another Oceania team could make it.

[ROballer]

New Zealand is pushing for the Qualifying Tournament, there is a best Asia/Oceania spot left.

Assuming Japan makes the Olympics directly themselvez as the Asian direct berth, New Zealand can make the qualifying tourney if they take care of business in their games.

Ok cool, thank you.

I knew there were qualifying games for the Olympics but didn’t think another Oceania team could make it.

They can either make it as the best Asian/Oceania team or just by their overall classification. And they probably will, judging they already have a win from the first group phase.

The Olympic Qualifying tourney has 24 teams participating. 5 of them have qualified in the last 10 days via the Pre-Olimpic tourney.

The teams who made the main group phase have already a guaranteed spot for next summer's Qualifying tourney.
But 5 of them will qualify directly for the Olympics, 2 from Europe, 2 from the Americas. + Australia.

So the remaining 11 teams will be participating in the Qualifying tournament + 5 teams from the prequalifiers(Poland, Croatia, Bahamas, Bahrain and Cameroon) + best team from Asia/Oceania + best team from Africa(actually second best technically, the best teams from Asia and Africa make the Olympics directly).

18 spots filled, 6 remaining. Probably between Finland, New Zealand, China, Jordan, Angola, Cote d'Ivoire, Egypt, Iran, Lebanon, Phillipines, Mexico.
Assuming South Sudan and Japan make it directly for the Olympics.
Also probably New Zealand and any other African nation have another direct berth to the Qualifying tournament.

Out of these, 6 make it as well even though they have lost most of their games thus far.


Basically long story short, almost every damn team in this tournament, with very few exceptions...will be at worst in the Olympics qualifying tournament as well.

That's why you still see guys like Markkanen busting their asses against Cape Verde for what seems a meaningless purpose, Finland can't even get classified in the top 20 most likely. But there's still that spot up for grabs, that's why the teams will go all in even in these consolation groups.

[jk31]

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

I'm not sure I understand you here, but Lithuania is the country with the longest tradition out of those, followed by Serbia. And Spain has a longest tradition than Greece. In Spain basketball became truly popular following the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, although It was already quite notorious during the 70s.

I don't really think that the sport grew in germany (though I don't have any numbers to back that up). But the difference is that our youth development got so much better since the 2000s. We have a bundesliga for youth teams (u16 and u19) now and bundesliga teams are forced to have at least 6 "local" players on their active roster on a gameday. these changes (amongst others) have improved the level of talent significantly since the early/mid 2000s.

[lambchop]

Not sure why anyone would like this tournament, at least with this format. There is no game worth watching tonight. 32 teams is just too much, if Fiba really wants to make this tournament interesting, reduce the number of teams to 24 max. Basketball is just not that popular to warrant so many teams.
In the old Olympics group phase format there were 4-5 great teams in a group of 6 which guarantees 1-2 great games everyday. They **** that up, but they should at least get this right

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

Regarding Germany I can't really say whether the general popularity of the sport increased that much, but I can say that it was Dirk Nowitzki's comments that led to major change. One day they invited him to have a look at the German youth basketball program. His assessment and public comments were harsh, but sincere. He said that the way they practiced was outdated and they were basically all just out there wasting their time and wasting the players' potential.

Shortly afterwards an "elite" youth national basketball league was created. Pro teams were forced to have teams in that league or somehow be involved or pay big fines. Teams in Germany's top pro league (Bundesliga) were also forced to have at least 6 active German players on their roster (technically that might even be against EU labour law cause it discriminates against other EU citizens). There was also some concern that forcing teams to have weaker German players would water down the overall level of play. But it was all about developing domestic players first and foremost. Now, all of a sudden, young German players knew they actually had a shot at going pro and getting quality minutes cause to get into that 8 or 9 man rotation you just had to be better than 3 or 4 other Germans, as opposed to beating out additional US players, Serbians etc.

All of that allowed guys like Schröder and Wagner to get decent or even great minutes at age 17 or 18. It also meant higher salaries overall because those players were in high demand and even players in the 4th and 5th highest league started getting some cash.

I even had buddies who put their dreams of going pro on the back burner in order to study and work regular jobs, but then put that on hold for a couple of years just to go pro for a bit, now that they had a realistic shot, the money was good and minutes were available. I can even remember one of my university professors urging me to do the same, but my mindset was just different at the time.

[lambchop]

We can ask our diverse group here what is driving the growth of the sport in their countries. Primarily those who don't ha e a long tradition( Greece, serbia, Lithuania), but nations that grew exponentially in the last 3 decades like Germany and spain and others

I'm not sure I understand you here, but Lithuania is the country with the longest tradition out of those, followed by Serbia. And Spain has a longest tradition than Greece. In Spain basketball became truly popular following the silver medal at the 1984 Olympics, although It was already quite notorious during the 70s.

I don't really think that the sport grew in germany (though I don't have any numbers to back that up). But the difference is that our youth development got so much better since the 2000s. We have a bundesliga for youth teams (u16 and u19) now and bundesliga teams are forced to have at least 6 "local" players on their active roster on a gameday. these changes (amongst others) have improved the level of talent significantly since the early/mid 2000s.

Beat me to it. This right here.

[Phreak50]

NZ looking tired. A 15 hour turnaround between games and down 17 at the half.

[lambchop]

NZ looking tired. A 15 hour turnaround between games and down 17 at the half.

I was about to say. Back to backs are pretty much unthinkable outside of the NBA. They do them in the youth international tournaments as well, but I can understand why NZ just can't handle it.