FIBA WORLD CUP 2019 | SPAIN are new WORLD CHAMPIONS

[Bob8]

I like all this excuses, but I wonder, where has disappeared the most talented team in this tournament? The team, which is better in 4/5 positions than anybody else?

This is cup.. 1 game makes a difference. If Serbia have beaten Spain or Argentina, they may just possibly win it all. But you can always lose 1 game, can't u?

Yes, but other fans are not looking for excuses and didn’t say that their team is far the most talented before the tournament. People are forgetting that those talented players didn’t win anything in their life yet. On the other hand, players like Bogdanovic have won it almost everything outside Nba. I believe there’s a big disparity between Illusions about some USA players and reality.

[CumberlandPosey]

Their biggest win is against Czech, which is nobody on basketball map. 7/8 place is just about right.

How you can ignore basketball powerhouse who gave NBA players like Zídek, man who lead UCLA to their last NCAA tittle? Jiří Welsch who started for famous Boston Celtics and taught Pierce how to win and Veselý? All legends.

yep.isnt blake griffin the american jan vesely??
legend

[UcanUwill]

Their biggest win is against Czech, which is nobody on basketball map. 7/8 place is just about right.

How you can ignore basketball powerhouse who gave NBA players like Zídek, man who lead UCLA to their last NCAA tittle? Jiří Welsch who started for famous Boston Celtics and taught Pierce how to win and Veselý? All legends.

yep.isnt blake griffin the american jan vesely??
legend

As Euroleague fan, I never been more embarrassed of MVP and DPOY winners as I was this year. Euroleague sucked.

[JonFromVA]

On no! Can't believe how inconsiderate FIBA is, with scheduling something so close to the start of the NBA....which is still well over a month away. Other leagues around the world also start soon and the best countries have players in the NBA too. Now that the USA couldn't make the SF, all of a sudden it doesn't matter. Every other country takes the World Cup seriously. The rest of the world don't care which players turn up, they just want to represent their countries at play hard to win.

The USA's biggest issue is the majority of their players cannot adjust to the different style of basketball that FIBA is. Kemba Walker will still be great in the NBA, because he plays that game really well, but he was lost out there tonight, as ISO ball will not work in FIBA.

NBA talent does not mean success in FIBA. If you have not played FIBA basketball previously, there is a big adjustment to make. Guards like Mills/De Colo/ Fournier/Rubio look like superstars in FIBA games, because they understand how to play that style of basketball. Yet we have people saying Kemba Walker is too small - Mills is about the same size and is in Top 5 for player of the tournament and some NBA fans think he's overpaid at Spurs making $11 mil per year.....

Sorry, go check the TV ratings if you don't believe how little most Americans care about the FIBA WC.

And while experience in the format matters a lot, talent still matters more. Feel free to compare the 2014 roster to the 2019 roster. The 2014 team suffered a major drop-off in talent and experience from the 2012 Olympic team and still won it all; but their drop-off was nothing like the 2019 team.

Jerry Colangelo mentioned the problems FIBA's schedule changes were causing the team well over a month ago. Heck, team USA had to qualify with a friggen G-League team because FIBA decided previous winners should no longer get an exemption and they scheduled the Americas tourney right in the middle of the NBA season. Why do you think FIBA made these changes?

As for Patty, we don't judge or pay players based on what they do in FIBA. The fact the Spurs were -1.5 points per 100 when Patty was off the floor speaks loudly about his value and/or the Spur's lack of PG depth after Murray went down with injury. We'll have to see on that.

So why Fiba made that changes? Before you answer that, may I remind you that Slovenia( Eurobasket champion), Croatia and Latvia didn’t even qualify because of this changes. Mostly All European players are from Nba or Euroleague, which accidentally starts in 3 weeks. And what about Olympics? USA is already qualified. All European countries except France and Spain, who are in semis, will have to qualify in pre-olympic tournaments. Only 4 places left. It will be bloody. So please stop crying about USA, which is in much better position.

You know it used to be people would mistakenly answer a rhetorical question as if it was a question ... now we have people responding to a question like it's rhetorical.

What was FIBA trying to do? That was a serious question.

Now let's talk about the repercussions ...

I never said what FIBA did to the scheduling didn't harm other teams, but surely you realize there's a difference between trying to qualify with a team of G-League level players .vs. NBA stars?

And while there are NBA players scattered across all these teams, why do you think it was primarily Team USA and Team Canada affected by players dropping out due to the scheduling changes? And by scheduling changes I'm talking about two things: moving up the games so they're back to back with the Olympics AND moving the games very late in the Summer/early FALL when players are getting ready for training camp.

There's only one team in this single elimination tourney that's expected to win it all and that's because Team USA is expected to be ridiculously more talented than the competition not slightly more talented. Make it close, and the odds of winning drop precipitously.

We're talking simple math here.... even if team USA was expected to win 87% of the time the odds of them wining a 5 game single elimination tourney would just be 50-50.

So, has the world caught up with the US in basketball?

That's simply not something you can conclude when the US is sending a team weaker than even something like the "B" team we sent to the 2014 World Championships.

[Maf]

Their biggest win is against Czech, which is nobody on basketball map. 7/8 place is just about right.

How you can ignore basketball powerhouse who gave NBA players like Zídek, man who lead UCLA to their last NCAA tittle? Jiří Welsch who started for famous Boston Celtics and taught Pierce how to win and Veselý? All legends.

yep.isnt blake griffin the american jan vesely??
legend

Yeah but since we are better now we can start call Blake the poor man's version of Veselý.

[JonFromVA]

On no! Can't believe how inconsiderate FIBA is, with scheduling something so close to the start of the NBA....which is still well over a month away. Other leagues around the world also start soon and the best countries have players in the NBA too. Now that the USA couldn't make the SF, all of a sudden it doesn't matter. Every other country takes the World Cup seriously. The rest of the world don't care which players turn up, they just want to represent their countries at play hard to win.

The USA's biggest issue is the majority of their players cannot adjust to the different style of basketball that FIBA is. Kemba Walker will still be great in the NBA, because he plays that game really well, but he was lost out there tonight, as ISO ball will not work in FIBA.

NBA talent does not mean success in FIBA. If you have not played FIBA basketball previously, there is a big adjustment to make. Guards like Mills/De Colo/ Fournier/Rubio look like superstars in FIBA games, because they understand how to play that style of basketball. Yet we have people saying Kemba Walker is too small - Mills is about the same size and is in Top 5 for player of the tournament and some NBA fans think he's overpaid at Spurs making $11 mil per year.....

Sorry, go check the TV ratings if you don't believe how little most Americans care about the FIBA WC.

And while experience in the format matters a lot, talent still matters more. Feel free to compare the 2014 roster to the 2019 roster. The 2014 team suffered a major drop-off in talent and experience from the 2012 Olympic team and still won it all; but their drop-off was nothing like the 2019 team.

Jerry Colangelo mentioned the problems FIBA's schedule changes were causing the team well over a month ago. Heck, team USA had to qualify with a friggen G-League team because FIBA decided previous winners should no longer get an exemption and they scheduled the Americas tourney right in the middle of the NBA season. Why do you think FIBA made these changes?

As for Patty, we don't judge or pay players based on what they do in FIBA. The fact the Spurs were -1.5 points per 100 when Patty was off the floor speaks loudly about his value and/or the Spur's lack of PG depth after Murray went down with injury. We'll have to see on that.

The rest of the world doesn't care if the USA doesn't watch the World Cup. We all know that unless you think you can win, you don't care. The disrespect shown by the US media outlets during this is hilarious. They are making assumptions off NBA play and no idea of the quality of guys playing in the Euro leagues.

The USA were not the only ones who had to qualify without players. Every country was missing their best players, and to qualify out of Eurpoe is a lot harder than through Americas or Asia. But keep making excuses with not even making the top 4.

We will see when the Olympics come around, but if you think just because KD/LBJ/AD/Steph/Harden turn up to play, you'll stroll through to the Gold medal, you're wrong. International basketball is DEEP now. Yes, there's always been a few very good teams, Spain/Argentina/Lithuania/Yugoslavia, but now there's France, Australia, Canada, Greece, Czechs and more who all have quality teas and every game will be tough. Plus, Harden will be called for a travel every time he does his 5 step step-back shots in FIBA, because they actually care about travels

I just made a post explaining the odds of what kind of dominance it takes to just have a 50-50 shot at winning an elimination tourney. The world hasn't "caught up" when Team USA even fielding their "A" team loses, but dream on.

[Catchall]

Welp. Today USA's perimeter defense was just bad. Missed rotations and open looks for the Serbs for most of the night. They shot well, but some of these looks didn't have a defender within 10 feet. Guys like Khris Middleton and Joe Harris are too slow to rotate defensively, and often, to even guard one on one.

[THE J0KER]

Imagine if Eastern Conference last season played on this FIBA system (one game knockout game instead of best of seven series), so in the quarterfinal of the East, as we know what happened in the game one of Philadelphia-Brooklyn and Toronto-Orlando series, there were shocking upsets with Nets and Magic beat Sixers and Raptors, and in that case Toronto and Philadelphia would play 5-8 place relegation game instead of semifinal game. That is how I see today USA-Serbia game

I believe you should see it totally differently. USA just wasn’t able to beat anybody serious in this WC. They have lucky escape against Turkey, which is btw. the worst Turkey in last 10 years, and than reality kick in. No way that this USA would have beaten Australia or Spain. Their biggest win is against Czech, which is nobody on basketball map. 7/8 place is just about right.

France is the best team remaining IMO, and the USA team playing without important starter Tatum lead them 76-71 less than 5 minutes before the end, before team collapse on the epic way finished the game with the pathetic 3-18 run. If USA beat France, they would be bold favorites to win gold.

[Bob8]

Imagine if Eastern Conference last season played on this FIBA system (one game knockout game instead of best of seven series), so in the quarterfinal of the East, as we know what happened in the game one of Philadelphia-Brooklyn and Toronto-Orlando series, there were shocking upsets with Nets and Magic beat Sixers and Raptors, and in that case Toronto and Philadelphia would play 5-8 place relegation game instead of semifinal game. That is how I see today USA-Serbia game

I believe you should see it totally differently. USA just wasn’t able to beat anybody serious in this WC. They have lucky escape against Turkey, which is btw. the worst Turkey in last 10 years, and than reality kick in. No way that this USA would have beaten Australia or Spain. Their biggest win is against Czech, which is nobody on basketball map. 7/8 place is just about right.

France is the best team remaining IMO, and the USA team playing without important starter Tatum lead them 76-71 less than 5 minutes before the end, before team collapse on the epic way finished the game with the pathetic 3-18 run. If USA beat France, they would be bold favorites to win gold.

Who cares what was partial score. France looked better more or less the whole match. And even if they have won, they wasn’t that close in first place, they would’t be the favorites for the gold. Spain proved against Serbia that they’re very serious team and Australia beat them 3 weeks ago.
But all that are speculations, the fact is that they have lost 3 games in a month and miraculously escaped against Turkey. They were just bad and 7/8 place is exactly what they deserved.

[NoDopeOnSundays]

Just realized France has the chance to be the World cup champion in football and basketball, would that be a first?

[jinxed]

Just realized France has the chance to be the World cup champion in football and basketball, would that be a first?

Technically, Spain was still the basketball world champions when they won the soccer world cup in 2010. (they would lose the title to the US a few months later).

[Maf]

Just realized France has the chance to be the World cup champion in football and basketball, would that be a first?

Quick search and nope. 1958 Brazil in football and 1959 in basketball.

[CumberlandPosey]

How you can ignore basketball powerhouse who gave NBA players like Zídek, man who lead UCLA to their last NCAA tittle? Jiří Welsch who started for famous Boston Celtics and taught Pierce how to win and Veselý? All legends.

yep.isnt blake griffin the american jan vesely??
legend

As Euroleague fan, I never been more embarrassed of MVP and DPOY winners as I was this year. Euroleague sucked.

well walter is not that bad a defender but to give him the award as the very best was a poor choice imo

[Bob8]

Sorry, go check the TV ratings if you don't believe how little most Americans care about the FIBA WC.

And while experience in the format matters a lot, talent still matters more. Feel free to compare the 2014 roster to the 2019 roster. The 2014 team suffered a major drop-off in talent and experience from the 2012 Olympic team and still won it all; but their drop-off was nothing like the 2019 team.

Jerry Colangelo mentioned the problems FIBA's schedule changes were causing the team well over a month ago. Heck, team USA had to qualify with a friggen G-League team because FIBA decided previous winners should no longer get an exemption and they scheduled the Americas tourney right in the middle of the NBA season. Why do you think FIBA made these changes?

As for Patty, we don't judge or pay players based on what they do in FIBA. The fact the Spurs were -1.5 points per 100 when Patty was off the floor speaks loudly about his value and/or the Spur's lack of PG depth after Murray went down with injury. We'll have to see on that.

So why Fiba made that changes? Before you answer that, may I remind you that Slovenia( Eurobasket champion), Croatia and Latvia didn’t even qualify because of this changes. Mostly All European players are from Nba or Euroleague, which accidentally starts in 3 weeks. And what about Olympics? USA is already qualified. All European countries except France and Spain, who are in semis, will have to qualify in pre-olympic tournaments. Only 4 places left. It will be bloody. So please stop crying about USA, which is in much better position.

You know it used to be people would mistakenly answer a rhetorical question as if it was a question ... now we have people responding to a question like it's rhetorical.

What was FIBA trying to do? That was a serious question.

Now let's talk about the repercussions ...

I never said what FIBA did to the scheduling didn't harm other teams, but surely you realize there's a difference between trying to qualify with a team of G-League level players .vs. NBA stars?

And while there are NBA players scattered across all these teams, why do you think it was primarily Team USA and Team Canada affected by players dropping out due to the scheduling changes? And by scheduling changes I'm talking about two things: moving up the games so they're back to back with the Olympics AND moving the games very late in the Summer/early FALL when players are getting ready for training camp.

There's only one team in this single elimination tourney that's expected to win it all and that's because Team USA is expected to be ridiculously more talented than the competition not slightly more talented. Make it close, and the odds of winning drop precipitously.

We're talking simple math here.... even if team USA was expected to win 87% of the time the odds of them wining a 5 game single elimination tourney would just be 50-50.

So, has the world caught up with the US in basketball?

That's simply not something you can conclude when the US is sending a team weaker than even something like the "B" team we sent to the 2014 World Championships.

1. Look up how difficult is to qualify for European countries in comparison to USA. That’s why countries like Croatia, Latvia and Slovenia weren’t in this WC. It’s not the problem only with players, who are playing in Nba, but all Euroleague players, who cannot play qualification matches too. Do you find interesting that USA is already qualified for Olympics, on the other hand all European countries except France and Spain will have to battle for only 4 places left.

2. Do you understand that the best players from other countries are playing in Nba too. So they have exactly the same problems than USA players. And what’s is even worse, competitions in Europe are starting in 3 weeks, 3 weeks before Nba season. So vast majority of players will have to start a season almost without preparation with their clubs. And these clubs are paying them, not national teams.

3. No, single countries didn’t caught USA and never will. You cannot expect that Serbia with 7 mio people will ever produce that many players like country with 325 mio people. I believe that match between USA and Europe would be very interesting, even if all the best players play.

4. USA sending bad team is their problem, not the problem of countries who beat you.

[UcanUwill]

yep.isnt blake griffin the american jan vesely??
legend

As Euroleague fan, I never been more embarrassed of MVP and DPOY winners as I was this year. Euroleague sucked.

well walter is not that bad a defender but to give him the award as the very best was a poor choice imo

Tavares is as slow as Boban and cant defend anything 7 feet away from the rim nor pick and roll. He is often unplayable because of his non existent defense, and they gave DPOY to such guy, in was a joke, couldnt believe it when it was announced.

So basically, MVP this year was a garbage bucket center who cant do anything else on offense, and DPOY was worst pick and roll defender in the whole league. Euroleague havent had such a star drought in ages. Remember when guys like Siskauskas and Deimantidis were in the league, now we he Valter Tavareses making all Euroleague teams and winning DPOY, what a joke.

[CumberlandPosey]

of course i remember diamantidis.loved that guy.such a pest and smart.
and nobody is a s slow as boban (maybe janglin joe but that is on purpose like andre miller)

[jimbutton4]

Holy crap, that's an amazing bet, I feel bad now knowing about it. I would have put at least 200 bucks on this if I'm more up to date on the odds.

I honestly think they aren't going to get through Sapin.

It can happen, still amazing pre-tournament odds.

I also don’t think they will beat Spain, but the odds were too good not to try.

[jimbutton4]

I put €500 on Australia at 1:32 odds before the start of the tournament. Two more wins and I make €16000.

Odds were too good not to try.

Holy crap, that's an amazing bet, I feel bad now knowing about it. I would have put at least 200 bucks on this if I'm more up to date on the odds.

They have to play against Spain and France/Argentina first

I don’t think they will get past Spain. They beat France a couple of days ago already.
Still tough team to beat twice.

[limbo]

Welp. Today USA's perimeter defense was just bad. Missed rotations and open looks for the Serbs for most of the night. They shot well, but some of these looks didn't have a defender within 10 feet. Guys like Khris Middleton and Joe Harris are too slow to rotate defensively, and often, to even guard one on one.

Khris Middleton and Brook Lopez were starters playing 31 mpg and 28 mpg, respectively, on the best defensive team in the NBA last season. In a league which features better teams, greater talent and overall, where is harder to play good defense than in FIBA ball, because of better individual talent, larger court and rules that protect offensive players.

So you are trying to tell me this guys can't play defense against guys like Varejao and Furkan Korkmaz?

Nah, these guys just didn't give an eff.

[reignfire]

Pop is the problem.

He is obviously a great coach. But he put in a system that is useful for teams DEPRIVED of talent like the Spurs. Team USA doesn't need ball movement. Just needs to out talent.

Coach K would have won with this team.