Men's Basketball FIBA World Cup 2023

[George_D 1,473]

no surprise for the win of GB. Since the best players of some countries arent able to play because of their teams euroleague obligations (not to mention NBA as well) , this system favors the theoritically "weak" countries. We saw some countries like Latvia with great players to stay out of big competitions (world cup)

[Makedonas 2,239]

On 11/26/2021 at 9:57 AM, George_D said:

no surprise for the win of GB. Since the best players of some countries arent able to play because of their teams euroleague obligations (not to mention NBA as well) , this system favors the theoritically "weak" countries. We saw some countries like Latvia with great players to stay out of big competitions (world cup)

I agree. None of the players who played for us against GB would've played if our Euroleague (and even NBA) players were available instead. It's actually a joke. Croatia for example also missed out on the last World Cup because of these dumb rules.

 

With all due respect, our real team never would've lost to GB. I am not surprised at this result because we were in the same group last time and although we won both games against GB (again with our random players), they were close games.

 

I am surprised they are still holding qualifying this way. Look at Turkey losing to Belarus as another example. That would never happen with the real national teams.

[Nickyc707 382]

1 hour ago, Makedonas said:

I agree. None of the players who played for us against GB would've played if our Euroleague (and even NBA) players were available instead. It's actually a joke. Croatia for example also missed out on the last World Cup because of these dumb rules.

 

With all due respect, our real team never would've lost to GB. I am not surprised at this result because we were in the same group last time and although we won both games against GB (again with our random players), they were close games.

 

I am surprised they are still holding qualifying this way. Look at Turkey losing to Belarus as another example. That would never happen with the real national teams.

GB were hardly at full strength themselves with players like Hesson and Soko missing.

[Makedonas 2,239]

1 hour ago, Nickyc707 said:

GB were hardly at full strength themselves with players like Hesson and Soko missing.

With all due respect, those are not exactly big names the way the likes of Papapetrou, Sloukas, Calathes, Papagiannis, Mitoglou, Papanikolaou, Printezis, Larentzakis etc. are. (and obviously the Antetokounmpo brothers)

[Makedonas 2,239]

We beat Belarus. That would've been embarrassing if we lost.

[heywoodu 16,022]

Netherlands lost by two points to Iceland, which was a bit of a negative surprise....and then lost by only two points to Italy, which is more of a "damn, so close to a nice surprise!" kind of feeling. Ugh.

[Federer91 3,029]

I will go out on a limb and say that Czechia wasn't playing with the squad, that was at the Olympics.  Nevertheless, an important win, that still keeps our changes of advancing to the next round. It could have been a double digit win, before the rematch on sunday, but, if they play like tonight, we could go for another win. 

[Makedonas 2,239]

On 12/2/2021 at 4:09 AM, heywoodu said:

Netherlands lost by two points to Iceland, which was a bit of a negative surprise....and then lost by only two points to Italy, which is more of a "damn, so close to a nice surprise!" kind of feeling. Ugh.

And now Iceland beat Italy by...two points 

 

 

 

 

Greece beat Turkey 72-71. It seems like we always find a way to beat Turkey in basketball no matter what. We have a really good record against them from memory. Sadly, I'm not sure if this record will remain as we play them again on Monday, in Turkey.

 

Big respect to the two major Greek clubs for letting some of their guys play today. Olympiacos had four players on the team (who played in yesterday's win over Olimpia Milano), and Panathinaikos risked their game against Red Star Belgrade (which they ended up winning today) by sending Papagiannis to the national team instead. We really needed a strong center today and he had a great game. Greece, Olympiacos, and Panathinaikos all won so in the end it seemed like a good strategy . Of course this was still not our "normal" national team but for such an important game it was necessary to try to get some of these guys, especially after that embarrassing loss to GB in November with our random non-NBA/non-Euroleague players.

[Orangehair43 285]

https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1119831/priti-patel-cancels-belarus-bball-visas
 

GB v Belarus cancelled. 

[MHSN 3,782]

FIBA officially disqualified South Korea from the Asian qualifiers. they failed to show up in the Philippines for their games without consulting with FIBA. they just said one of our players is tested positive for COVID and we are not coming!

 

I totally understand how much people in East Asia care about this Covid thing but this is too much. the rest of the continent can't wait for them.

 

but this is a big news, with this NZ, Philippines and India are already in the 2nd round and that gives Lebanon and Jordan a very good chance to qualify for the World Cup together. they only have to beat KSA and India. KSA is a good team and they already beat Jordan once but they can't beat anybody else (except India) from the other group.

 

as for Iran, World Cup Qualification looked easy on paper but it's not easy anymore. we somehow considered ourselves as good as Lithuania and Serbia  and stupidly didn't gather all of our best players for this window. Kazakhstan gave us a bitter lesson. even today's game against Syria was scary until the 4th quarter.   we need all we have for the next window to beat Kazakhstan away and make up for that defeat.