FIBA WORLD CUP 2019 | SPAIN are new WORLD CHAMPIONS

[rale93lfc]

They got better names in team than NZ by far, but when you get 53 points in a half from NZ than something bad is going on. Montenegro coach is sent off from a game...

[Sgt Major]

Vucevic has been terrible so far.

[gh123]

Vuc just jaking ill-advised crap 2nd game in a row.

[TheDiesel36]

If we were able to make a freakin slam dunk at least 50% of the time, the game against Japan would be over..

[Nuntius]

That's some pretty depth analysis and a good one.

But what I saw from game vs Serbia, even the small guards was not that good.

Oh, I'm definitely not trying to claim that they are very good or anything of that sort. As I said in that previous post, I do agree with the poster that I was responding to about the quality of their league. It isn't very high. I think that Lux Dux quoted a Filipino fan talking about their league and their federation in one of their earlier pages and his insight seemed to be pretty good. My post was focused solely on how many tall players the country produces (which is an abysmally low number).

[DaddyCool19]

Germany plays like trash. With a team that is supposed to be the deepest they ever had.

[Pg81]

Germany plays like trash. With a team that is supposed to be the deepest they ever had.

Germany has always been trash without prime Dirk. Misplaced optimism is misplaced. We do not even have a Detlef Schrempf level player at the moment.

[gh123]

Germany plays like trash. With a team that is supposed to be the deepest they ever had.

Germany has always been beyond awful, having role players on bad NBA teams doesn't mean jack. The rest of the team is trash either.

[stoo]

I think Serbia has the best TEAM, and is quite close to the overall talent of the US. I think for both Serbia and the USA, not making the finals would be a complete disaster/failure.

My tiers:
Tier 1 - Serbia, USA
Tier 2 - Greece, France, Australia (possibly Spain too)
Tier 3 - Spain, Italy, Canada, Lithuania, Argentina, Brazil
Tier 4 - Turkey, Russia, Poland

I got similar:

Tier 1 - USA, Serbia
Tier 2 - Greece, France, Australia, Spain, Lithuania
Tier 3 - Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Turkey, Russia

[Illmatic12]

Fazekas fouled out thank god. Literally the worst defensive player I’ve ever witnessed in a televised basketball game.

Japan’s guards are freaking godawful. They can’t finish anything at the rim, can’t throw entry passes into the post, and forget about them being able to defend anyone.

[stoo]

Away with? The only reason Serbia is playing twelve deep right now is because they're blowing severely under-matched teams out in the 1st quarter. Going deep is not their calling card, they just have a solid bench where players know how to play within the system they got. Once the elimination rounds start, the coach will shore up the rotations and their best players will get to play most of the matches. And this means Jokic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, Jovic will be playing over 30 minutes, which is not good news at all if you're the opposition.

Nah, Jovic is gonna share minutes with Micic. If it were 2016 sure, but Micic is now better player. Micic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, Jokic, Raduljica will play most minutes

[DaddyCool19]

Schröder is trash. I bet he won't even get a longer Full MLE deal next year.

[saritasbora]

OMG Germans just lost the game against Dominicans.
What a disaster
What was Schroeder thinking not taking the shot on that last position?

[stoo]

well well, Germany's out... first surprise of the tournament. Congratulations to Dominicana
Hopefully Venezuela beats China

[pootbrah]

Didn't watch Germany game; did Schroeder shoot them out of it like the boxscore suggests? Westbrook must have rubbed off on him haha

[UcanUwill]

Just, our secound unit is still strong. Boban didn't entered the game at all.

I just cant figure it out how Phillippines can't be better at basketball? As I heard they like it really much, and have population around 104 millions. Maybe size and athletic disadvantages, really don't know...

We got around 7 million people and played last 3 finals of most important competitions.

Their excuse is that they are short, but its hard for me to believe that they have less basketball size people than lets say Slovenia or Lithuania, countries with literally 100X lesser populations.

You'd think but when you take a look at the actual players in their league you'll see that one of the most dominant Centers to ever play in the PBA is Asi Taulava, standing at 6'9. At 6'9 he towered over most of his competition and he was able to average a double-double even when he was 43 years old.

Being short isn't an excuse. It's a reality for Filipinos. The average male height in the Philippines is 5'4, one of the lowest in the world. On the other hand, the average male height in Lithuania and Slovenia is 5'10 and 5'11 respectively -> https://ourworldindata.org/human-height

That is an extremely significant difference. It doesn't matter if the Philippines have 100 million people if only 1% of them is tall enough to play basketball.

Here's another way to look at it. Let's use 6'6 as our guideline. We agree that 6'6 is a pretty average size for basketball, right? There is a site that calculates height percentile. It has the data for the average height in a country, it has the standard deviation in height (based on CDC and WHO numbers) and all you have to input is the height and the country -> https://tall.life/height-percentile-calculator-age-country/

If we input 6'6 in Slovenia, we'll see that the person in question would be in the 99.174 percentile. He would obviously be considered tall and only 1 in 121 would be taller than him. The total male population of Slovenia is 960,076 (data based on this -> https://www.indexmundi.com/slovenia/demographics_profile.html ). 960,076/121 equals 7,934 people. That's the pool of 6'6+ people that Slovenia has. About 8k.

If we do the same for Lithuania, we'll see that the person in question would be in the 99.751 percentile. He would be obviously be considered tall and only 1 in 401 would be taller than him. The total male population of Lithuania is 1,301,923 (data based on this -> https://www.indexmundi.com/lithuania/demographics_profile.html ). 1,301,923/401 equals 3,246 people. That's the pool of 6'6+ people that Lithuania has. It's about half the pool that Slovenia has.

Now, let's do the same for the Philippines. A 6'6 guy in the Philippines would be considered extremely tall and he'd be in the 100th percentile. Only 1 in 2,055,057 would be taller than him. Yes, 1 in a bit more than 2 million. That's how rare it is to find someone above 6'6 in the Philippines. The total male population of the Philippines is 52,336,902. 52,336,902/2,055,057 equals 25,5 people. That's the pool of players taller than 6'6 that the Philippines have. Yes, that pool is less than 26 people.

If we do the exact same thing for the Philippines but instead of 6'6 we look at 6'8, we will see that only 1 in 83,987,084 are taller than 6'8. And yes, that number is higher than the total male population of the Philippines. This means that there are basically no males in the Philippines that are 6'9. None. Zero. That's why Asi Taulava (that is actually half-Tongan which explains why he's taller than the average Filipino) was able to tower over everybody else and average a double-double at age 42. There was literally no other player that could match his height. And that height was 6'9, not 7'1.

I agree with you that the level of the PBA is not very high. That's true. But to say that height is an excuse that Filipinos use is just not true. The pool of people that are actually tall enough to play basketball (above 6 foot) is exceedingly small and countries like Slovenia and Lithuania definitely have a much bigger pool of tall players to choose from.

Intersting, intersting, I am not sure your math is proven science but interesting.

Man, 5'4 average height for a man sounds insane, I think it must be somewhat wrong. I mean Kristen Bell is taller. You say 5'10 is average height in Lithuania, but i find that hard to believe too. I am 5'9 grew up in Lithuania, and I was one of the shortest guys there for sure. i would say around 6'0 or 183 cm, which is where Dutch men are I believe too. sounds about right. Pilipinos really chose the wrong sport to be crazy about if thats the case, should focus on being Wingers in football instead.

[UcanUwill]

Vucevic has been terrible so far.

Vuc has been trash for years, I am this he might be most overrated player in the league. I give him that he increased his efficiency bigtime last season, for the first time he actually was good last year, but I think thats a fluke. I just dont like bigs who cant draw fouls whatsoever and rely on their efficiency purely if their mid range and long rang shots are falling. Thats so unreliable. THe only guy that is like that that I like is Horford, but horford is an exception, he is elite at other areas beside scoring, and his scoring is very secondary. Vuc does close to nothing elite beside shooting his jumpers and thats it. Quote me on that, but vuc with that contract will end up as massive bust. I think Valanciunas is better player, but when I say that people always say that I am crazy, and I think its all that because Vuces game is more pleasing to the eye. Valanciunas is very awkward on offense and that makes you forget that he is actually an elite scorer.

[rale93lfc]

Away with? The only reason Serbia is playing twelve deep right now is because they're blowing severely under-matched teams out in the 1st quarter. Going deep is not their calling card, they just have a solid bench where players know how to play within the system they got. Once the elimination rounds start, the coach will shore up the rotations and their best players will get to play most of the matches. And this means Jokic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, Jovic will be playing over 30 minutes, which is not good news at all if you're the opposition.

Nah, Jovic is gonna share minutes with Micic. If it were 2016 sure, but Micic is now better player. Micic, Bogdanovic, Bjelica, Jokic, Raduljica will play most minutes

No way that Raduljica plays more minutes then Milutinov.

[dirkules_41]

OMG Germans just lost the game against Dominicans.
What a disaster
What was Schroeder thinking not taking the shot on that last position?

More amazing was casually walking the ball up the court with 8s left.
How Maxi gets 0 shots and I think Schroder and Theis a combined 40 is beyond me as well.
Not nominating Mo Wagner, Isaac Bonga and Hartenstein is also beyond questionable imo - at least they're young and keen on playing

[Andi Obst]

Didn't watch Germany game; did Schroeder shoot them out of it like the boxscore suggests? Westbrook must have rubbed off on him haha

Yes, he did. It didn't help that the team doesn't have any more players who can handle the ball and apparently no players who actually care (aside from Lo maybe), but Schröder was incredibly bad on offense and somehow worse/non-existent on defense. I'm speechless right now.