New Sign and European Debutants
In a noble desire to make national team competitions more attractive for fans around the world, the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) has undertaken a number of serious reforms that are too early to assess the full extent of the consequences. However, the current Olympic cycle resembles the global experiment of basketball officials.
The world championship has undergone the most significant changes - the organization’s main image tournament, the success or failure of which will determine its further development. And if the renaming of the tournament to the World Cup instead of the usual championship does not play a role in its fate, then the situation with the timing and format of the event is different.
The FIBA board has moved the competition for an odd year so that they do not compete for the spectator with the football world cup. But not the fact that the basketball authorities benefited from this. For the many reasons why stars of the first magnitude refused to come to the location of their national teams, one more was added - the reluctance to spend two (and, in the case of the top teams of the Old World, three at all, taking into account Eurobasket 2021) summers in a row instead of a good rest and recovery after a hard club season.
In addition, September is not a good time to host the World Cup, as those who linger in China until the late stages of the playoffs and medal matches risk not preparing properly for the regular NBA or Euroleague championships.
Where this leads, Russian fans should remember in 2017, when their favorites came to their senses for several months after a very successful, but extremely exhausting continental forum.
Finally, the qualification of the upcoming World Cup left a contradictory impression, the vast majority of matches of which were played in the middle of the club season. Because of this, many teams could not count on their own leaders who have contracts with Euroleague and NBA clubs.
The same Spaniards with the French with their richest pool of talents and a system of training young athletes debugged for decades to win trips to the Celestial Empire didn’t stop (as did the Americans who selected for the tournament of the development League team). But the current European champions of Slovenes in the basketball World Cup will not. Goran Dragic, Luka Doncic, Anthony Randolph and other creators of the Balkan miracle two years ago simply could not help the team in the most important matches for it, and it was not possible to overcome the enormous personnel shortage in a small country with a population of two million people.
It is significant that in a tournament with a record 32 participating teams and an unprecedented eight quotas for Asia and Oceania, both debutants of planetary forums are from Europe. The Czech team decently helped the calendar. The Czechs won decisive in terms of qualifying for KM-2019 victories over Russia and Bosnia in September 2018 with the active participation of Chicago Bulls defender Tomas Satoranski and center Fenerbahce Jan Vesely, who did not come to other qualifying games.
Montenegrins are lucky that the Spanish “Valencia” missed the last Euroleague draw. And while some teams patched holes in a three-second zone with basketball players without international experience, the Balkans could count on the eminent center Boyan Dublyevich, who entered the top three top scorers of regional selection.
In other areas, the introduction of international windows in the middle of the club season did not affect the distribution of trips to China so significantly. Argentina and Australia, for example, easily made it to the mundial without all of their star and not very legionnaires. And the Mexicans who entered the playoffs of the 2014 World Cup were equally bad, both with the Zenit rookie Gustavo Aion and without him.
Sophisticated draw system and loser tournament
The Chinese World Cup will be held according to an intricate system with two group rounds, which, on the one hand, will disappoint demanding fans with a decent number of “gray” and unattractive matches (you will hardly be interested in the oppositions of Venezuela - Côte d'Ivoire or the Dominican Republic - Jordan). At the same time, eight really strong teams will enter the quarterfinals, which will exclude any kind of accident.
At the main stage of the tournament, 32 teams will be divided into eight groups - Russian basketball players will meet with rivals from Nigeria, Argentina and South Korea in Quartet B. The two best teams will reach the next stage, where play-off tickets will be played on the same principle.
Moreover, for countries that fail to be among the 16 winners of the main round, KM-2019 will not end immediately. They have to take part in the classification competition for 17-32 places. Its holding makes sense for the simple reason that the world championship is a qualifying tournament for the 2020 Summer Olympics.
Seven teams (two best each from Europe and America, and one each from Asia, Africa and Oceania according to the results of the World Cup) will book direct tickets to Tokyo, and the next 16th in rank will get a place in one of the four additional qualification tournaments of the Games 2020.
Despite the tremendous personnel losses - in China, Sergei Bazarevich will not be able to count on the back line leaders Alexei Shved, Dmitry Khvostov and Dmitry Kulagin - with a net at the championship of the planet, he was lucky.
In the second group and in the tournament for 17-32 places, representatives of Quartet B will fight for a place in the sun with teams from the very weak Group A, where the teams from Côte d'Ivoire, China, Poland and Venezuela drew lots. Therefore, despite all the difficulties faced by domestic basketball players in the process of preparing for the World Cup, getting into the Olympic qualification looks like a very realistic task.
The lack of a clear favorite
Since the NBA allowed representatives of the league to take part in national tournaments (and this happened before the 1992 Olympics, which showed the world the legendary “dream team” with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and others), the US team is considered clear and hardly not the only contender for gold medals.
Bookmakers consider Americans to be favorites before the World Cup in China, but in the summer of 2019, the US team is not at all invulnerable. Last week, the Americans suffered the first defeat in 13 years, the main, so to speak, composition, losing to Australia in a friendly match. In addition, the process of forming the final application of the grand of world basketball for the championship of the planet was more like an endless tragicomedy with a curious ending.
At a certain point, only 12 basketball players were left at the disposal of Greg Popovich, who will eventually play on the world Cup. Some of the invitees simply refused to be called to the national team, while others left the training camp either due to injuries or of their own free will.
Only two of these 12 players have experience playing in significant international tournaments - forward Harrison Barnes won the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, and center Mason Plumley can boast of the 2014 World Cup gold.
Only playmaker Kemba Walker and swingman Chris Middleton took part in the last NBA All-Star Game, both of which represented the Eastern Conference, which was obviously weaker in terms of player selection. Barnes owns the only all-American champion ring, won in 2015 as part of the Golden State Warriors.
That is, in China, the US team will not really frighten opponents: even at the previous World Cup, where Mike Krzyszewski didn’t seem to have the strongest possible set of players, he had Kairi Irving, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry and Clay Thompson, defeated all opponents with an average difference of 33 points.
Therefore, at least from the camp of the Serbian national team, who lost two big finals in a row to the Americans - at the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympics - there are already loud statements about readiness to overthrow the Americans from the throne. And with all the desire, it’s impossible to call such rhetoric groundless even after the injury of the star point guard Milos Teodosic.
The traditionally powerful Spaniards will have good chances for success, who will be led in China by the newly made NBA champion in the Toronto Raptors Marc Gasol. The Greeks who yearned for success in the international arena, who recruited MVP of the 2018/19 season in the NBA of Yannis Adetokunbo, will also claim a serious result.
Australia’s superbly organized, played and very experienced team can easily surprise you, in which the famous veterans Patty Mills and Andrew Bogut do the weather. Representatives of the Green Continent stopped a step away from the medals of the previous Games and intend to win at any cost at least something before the painful process of generational change.
But the French and Lithuanians in the list of favorites of the second tier make rather out of habit. Vincent Collet’s team is by no means impressive by name, and the Balts have only names left - the best years of Jonas Maciulis, Reynaldas Seybutis, Mantas Kalnietis and Paulus Yankunas are already behind, but they still play significant roles in the national team.
In any case, the fans will have a competitive tournament with a poorly predicted outcome. There is every reason to believe that it is at the World Cup in China that the golden series of Americans who won five international tournaments in a row (two World Championships and three Olympics) can be interrupted.
There are several nominal outsiders who can pleasantly surprise, for example, the above-mentioned Montenegro with its outstanding front line, strengthened in comparison with the qualification of Nikola Vuchevich from Orlando Magic. In the end, there is a whole group of "dark horses", which include the Russian team. Bazarevich’s wards, most likely, themselves do not yet know what they will be capable of in China, but it is definitely not worth completely writing them off.