• First phase: this is the group from Spain
  • Calendar Check the schedules of all World Cup matches
  • Chronicle: An impossible scare against Tunisia
  • Future rivals.Serbia and Italy warn Spain

There are clashes, in the Basketball World Cups, which are resolved at the outset due to insurmountable physical or technical differences. Thus, yesterday, Italy-Philippines, a party in which Asians were hopelessly conditioned by their physical-ethnic conditions: they are very short, and the help of a nationalized New Yorker such as Andray Blatche (2,10) is insufficient when the The rest of his teammates must yield 15 or 20 centimeters tall to the Italian in front of them. Six of the 12 Filipinos measure less than 1.90, and the Italians - excellent training, by the way - took advantage of it.

If we only look at the results, Spain-Tunisia should have resembled that unequal confrontation. But in this case the differences were not so much physical as, probably, of concentration, and the ups and downs indicate rather a difference in intensity between the two teams. Spain knew that he could not lose, and at times, at first, he forgot to do what was necessary to win.

When a match ends with about 40 points of difference the temptation is to leave it in the category of foreseeable and logical beatings. But if that game has been started by losing the first quarter, the thing may be of greater interest: the deficiencies that Spain is suspected in the internal defense were quite evident to the African champion team and with a fairly European game discipline, in which Salah Mejri reminded us again that he could have been the Walter Tavares avant la lettre of Real Madrid, but he ended up being one of those few notable players - like his rival yesterday, Willy Hernangómez - who did not finish entering the same length Wave with Pablo Laso .

When it starts so badly, the subsequent reaction becomes more valuable. That inner defense and the outside players of Spain gave a shot course that was especially welcome after the calamitous exhibition against Russia, and it ended up being a good confidence building exercise for a very collective Spanish team, with six double-digit scorers, against matches like the one in Puerto Rico, which will demand more.

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  • Basketball World Cup 2019
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