Mickey8 wrote:THE J0KER wrote:peja_the_legend wrote:Stop mentioning Croatia please.For Gods sake they lost to Romania(!!) and Netherlands(!!!!) in the qualyfing rounds.And when the NBAers joined in some games they lost again.They got what they deserved
Mickey8 wrote:Its not about quantity of the NBA players certain NT have, quality is what matters the most ,also there are lots of good players playing in Euro leagues. Croatia didn't accomplish anything with all their NBA players being available, they havent made much of the difference for them , only Bogdanovic perform well constantly , Saric always unperformed , Bender,Hezonja,Zizic and Zubac ara marginal players in the NBA. As I said before on some other topic, Serbia in 2014 had zero NBA players but they went straight to the finals , while some other teams had 3,4 NBA players on their squad also in 2016 they had only the one, Jokic who just completed his rookie season.
It is not true. Qualifications for the last 16th Wilde Card spot at Olympics Games was NBA friendly, so Croats won that tournament in Italy to reach Rio-2016 despite home team played with Gallinari, Belinelli, and the home crowd, and Giannis played for Greece. But NBA-Croatia not just qualified for Rio by beating strong Greece and Italy teams, but won their Rio group beating Spain, Lithuania, and home team Brazil, and lose just -3pts vs eventual finalist Serbia in the tight quarterfinal. Croatia would be clearly TOP10 team at this championship even if all 32 teams playing with all their best players. Spain, Serbia, and Italy won their games today 101-62, 105-59, 108-62 with 40+ margin, so how anyone can say Croatia in full force don't deserve to be in China this summer instead of one of those semi-amateur level team? We can argue are they have a team to fight for medals or not at big tournaments, but to say they don't deserve to be part of TOP32 while they have World's TOP10 roster is very wrong.
One decent run at the Olympics doesn't mean they deserve anything. They had lost to the same Philippines in 2014 , they were embarrassed by Czech Republic and Russia in the consecutive Eurobasket quarter finals , those were one side beatings ,blow outs. As I said they had their best players last summer, if they defeated Lithuania B squad and Poland with those players ,they would have had probably qualified for this year World Championship, you cant claim that they are deserving to be in China, when they clearly blew their chances and there is no one else to blame but those NBA players.
I'm from Croatia, and I absolutely agree with you, we got what we deserved. Yes, NBA and Euroleague players couldn't play in most of the qualifiers, but we were in a group with Netherlands and Romania, and we managed to lose to those teams. Even with players that were there, we were the more talented team. And then, with NBA players, we lost to Lithuania at home, who played without NBA players, and we lost to Poland away. We had our chances, and we blew it.
The problem is quite deep with our basketball, it goes way beyond players and it starts from the top. If you guys are from Serbia, then I would make the comparison to your football. The whole system is tainted, and talent gets lost in that jungle.
Our federation is ran by two stooges, Dino Rađa, and Stojko Vranković, who thought they know everything just because they played. They have conflicts with some of the important players and get rid of them. It's same with the coaches, and that's why they fired Aco Petrović, only to appoint two guys who were totally incompetent, had no resume, and they got there simply because they were their buddies, so Rađa could select the roster for them. The coaching I saw in those qualifying games is the worst I've ever seen in basketball, from both tactical and psychological standpoint. There was no single concrete action. I wouldn't even blame the players, that's how bad it was.
We had some decent runs in the past, like that 2016 Olympic run that was mentioned, and 2013 Eurobasket where we got to the semi final, with a much less talented team than we have now. But it's all about consistency, that's how you establish yourself as a basketball powerhouse, and we never had any consistency since the 90's.
The key issue is that we've lived so much in the past over the years, trying to live up to success of 80's and 90's geenrations. We set the medals as a standard for success for so many years, but we didn't have Petrović, Kukoč and Rađa anymore. Our leaders wer guys like Giriček, and we still had the same standard.
Small country like ours can't produce special talent in every generation. So when you have unrealistic expectations like that, it creates an unnecessary pressure, and when you fail to meet those expectations few years in a row, then it becomes a syndrome, almost like a curse, and it weighs so much on every generation. When you add the incompetent leadership to that, especially these two fools we have right now, then you can't even qualify for the World Cup. Maybe it's good in the long run, we need to be humbled. Good thing is that we have the most talented generation since the 90's, so it's not all that bad.