UcanUwill wrote:pepe1991 wrote:Pretty damn boring day one. Majority of games aren't competitive, there are simply too many (bad) national teams in Eurobasket with 24 teams format. Old 16 teams format was way more competitive and interesting.
Qualifications make no sense, they are played in middle of a season and most backbone players from national teams can't even play in those games.
Cyprus is qualified due hosting, same national team had 1-5 in group stage, -69 plus minus, in second stage they went 0-6, with -113 plus minus and in last stage they went 0-6 with - 176 plus minus.
Overall 1-17, plus minus -358. In last 30 games, they lost 28. Won one by not playing. But hey, host gotta play!
If they want to make whole thing feel more important, than qualifications can't be complete mess. Complete lack of international fans in arena shows that whole thing simply doesn't draw.
And last nugget of brilliance, flying distance between hosts, Finland and Cyprus is 6 and half hours. so even if you want to watch games as fan, it's impossible, unlike in football where even when there are joined hosting, it's always among close country where fans can drive around. Nobody hates basketball more than FIBA.
They did everything in their power to make whole thing as meaningless as it is, despite having 3 out of top 4 players in the world in it.
Football also do not have multiple games at the same time, well except final group stage game, but it is for standing count reasons. They go out of their way that fans could watch every games. The difference is people watch football, it is far far more popular. FIBA having multiple games at the same time is a reminder that its a complete niche thing, they have multiple events at the same time in hope they find views at all. I was watching Great Britain game and was wondering how many brits even aware of this tournament, its probably less than half percent. In 2023 I was in one social media memes group and they were making Cricket world cup memes, and I said I will make basketball world cup memes, but I was almost laughted out of that group, lots of people barely knew what basketball is, That is just sad reality.
FIBA creating window qualifying system sucks. They wsnt to be FIFA so bad, but it does not work if two strongest leagues by far do not cooperate with you and do not allow their players to play. It will blow in their face when one time team like USA or Canada or whatever will fail to even quallify. We already have Croatia not qualified this year. In Football, during FIBA window, all club leagues have a break so all the best players play, where in FIBA all these top teams just have a missfit squads, and these guys suppose to qualify you, knowing they wont play in actual thing anyway, because in actual thing all the best nba and Euroleague players will be available... It is **** all around.
I'm from Croatia so i know the pain
, maybe that's why i'm so salty about qualifications, because they are full blown idiotic.
Like, you have "qualifications" played but you can't use NBA players and majority of Euroleague players. Basically, in order to send some, i don't know, Bojan Bogdanovic, Šarić, Zubac, Hezonja to Eurobasket, group of basketball nobodies from national league have to beat other nobodies from also national leagues.
How unfair it is even to players who do play qualifications? Like, good job, you played well, now GTFO so we can replace you with some actually good player, despite fact he wasn't even part of qualifications process.
Tbh i feel like basketball is losing popularity all together, including NBA. That's why Silver is so dead set on expansion, right now USA people are introduced to whole sports gambling thing and that will keep them glued for a while, but also bring more undesired stuff like betting scandals & questions how many games are rigged (especially ones that are easy to manipulate by players like rebounding by player margins that are kind a low and easy to fix. I don't know, Terry Rozier over 2,5 rebounds ). btw it is funny to me that 5- 10 years ago, all commercials around nba games were about food, traveling etc, now it's only betting and gambling and nothing else.
I think Silver's hunt for parity will hurt league more than it will help it. Soccer thrives when household names are on top. As much as people want parity, vast majority of general audience is way more engaged in product to watch and hate watch some Lakers, than Pacers and OKC.
That has been reality of sports for years. My wedding's best man once said, and it's actually so damn true: man in life only watches two teams. His favorite team and one he hates the most.
But back to current Eurobasket. Like i said, too many bad teams. First stage will be borderline unwatchable. That's what happens when you have multiple countries that participate with population of one street in London. Or participants are from GB, but country as a whole has no interest in sport.
Late edit:
Number of people in arena during yesterday's first day:
Great Britain- Lithuania - 4200
Czech Republic- Portugal- 1279
Montenegro- Germany - 3495
Latvia- Turkey - 11000 (sold out)
Sweden- Finland -11865 ( sold out , one of hosts )
Serbia- Estonia - 8100
Total viewers in arena: 39400 people.
Qualifications for Champions League Benfica vs Fenerbache , 64 000 people (sold out) , Quarabag vs Ferenchavroš -29000 people (sold out).
Like, literally, third tear soccer leagues draw more than first day of Eurobasket did. Not that viewership will be much better.
Life is what happens when you're busy making other plans. -John Lennon
