Men's Basketball FIBA European Championship 2022

[Vektor 3,326]

Wtf, are we cursed, or something?  This is the third draw after EURO2020 and the women's handball Olympic tournament where we get a really difficult group. And we always get . 

 

Group B -          

 

Yikes, RIP.

 

The other groups:

 

Group A -          

 

Group C -            

 

Group D -            

[dophuquy 45]

I can not imagine, Latvia team didn't qualify 

[Makedonas 2,263]

I really hope Greece can return to the medals here. I can't believe that our senior team has not won a medal since Eurobasket 2009!

 

It's actually crazy but we've had a lot of disappointing results since then. At the 2010 World Cup we played Spain in the round of 16, while at the previous World Cup we played Spain in the final. At the 2014 World Cup, we won our group (beat teams like Argentina and Croatia) but lost in the round of 16 to Serbia, who ended up making the final. The other teams who won their groups had easy draws, we had to play Serbia. At Eurobasket 2015 we won our group (beat hosts Croatia for example) and beat Belgium in the round of 16 but lost a very close match against Spain in the quarterfinals. Of course Spain ended up winning the tournament.

 

It also doesn't help that we are always missing several key players for big tournaments very often in the last decade or so.

 

 

I think this can be a very good Greek roster IF everyone is healthy and shows up:

Guards: Sloukas, Calathes, Dorsey, Larentzakis

Forwards: G.Antetokounmpo, Papapetrou, Mitoglou, T.Antetokounmpo, Papanikolaou

Centres: Papagiannis, K.Antetokounmpo

 

That is only 11 players so I would give the last spot to another forward probably, either Printezis (he will be 37 so that is why I didn't include him because I'm not sure if he will still play for the national team, plus he seems to be declining, although he might want to play one last time after he had to miss Olympic qualifying due to injury), or Kalaitzakis (he is playing for the Bucks but so far only appeared in 5/14 games for them). 

 

Other than that, no one else really stands out and there are dozens of other players that can be in contention for any position if some of these guys aren't available.

 

We could also probably use another centre otherwise, but Koufos is now in the NBA G League and he has really declined the last few years (despite not being that old yet), and I don't think Mantzoukas (our big young talent) will be ready as he is only 18 and barely plays for Panathinaikos.

[Federer91 3,386]

Eurobasket starts tomorrow and it's always nice to have the opening match be between equal teams, in this case Spain and Bulgaria. You have to start the Championships with a banger match.

[Vektor 3,326]

The Hungarian team played well against Lithuania and Czech Republic in the World Cup qualifiers recently, so maybe these Euros won't be a complete disaster. Still, I expect 5 defeats in that insane group. I think with the help of Hanga we would qualify for the R16 in any of the other groups, but from Group B... yeah, not happening. It's silly how unfair this draw was for us. 

[George_D 1,640]

Spain easily 114-87 against Bulgaria

[phelps 8,715]

Bosnia i Hercegovina not so easily over Hungary, 95-85 the final score...

 

Dzanan Musa the MVP for BIH, Nurkic not so effective (despite the 19 points scored), in fact he only played about half the time of the match...

[Werloc 3,191]

Like for real, how can this group even exist?

 

Group B:

France [#4 World rankings]

Slovenia [#5]

Lithuania [#8]

Germany [#11]

Hungary [#43]

Bosnia & Herzegovina [#46]

 

A [#2, 16, 25, 36, 37, 52]

C [#9, 10, 21, 32, 45, 48]

D [#6, 12, 13, 35, 42, 47]

 

That's some horrid balancing right there, at least exchanging Germany with the third best team from group A would give Bosnia and Hungary some feasible chances to survive.

 

[rybak 3,431]

Wow, what a surprise, we beat host nation Czech Republic in first match 99-84 

[phelps 8,715]

very proud performance by Croatia, but Giannis (and his teammates) were just too strong in the end...

 

Italy trying to make their own life complicated against Estonia...

but we all know it's gonna be a very difficult championship for us, especially after Gallinari's injury...