Interbasket member JGX wrote up this post to explain how the FIBA world rankings really work, as well as pointing out the many shortfalls of the ranking/point system used to determine a country’s placement.

How are the FIBA world rankings determined?
It’s very simple. Countries receive points for each zonal and world championships they participate in over a cycle of two Olympic games.

For these tournaments, teams receive placement points, from 50 points for first place down to 1 point for sixteenth place, which are multiplied by a tournament weighting factor to give their overall points for the tournament.

Major world tournaments such as the Olympics and World Championships have the highest weights. A team’s total score is just the sum of their points from each tournament over the cycle.

U19 and U21 (now U17?) world championships are included in the rankings. Qualifying rounds for zonal tournaments at senior level are not counted. Neither are zonal championships at junior levels, or friendly matches at any level.

FIBA’s ranking system is all explained here on FIBA’s website.

Before I detail the weaknesses with FIBA’s ranking system, I’ll note that this all comes from the standpoint that FIBA’s rankings can and should be something that gives you meaningful information about the relative strengths of national teams.

If FIBA just wants an harmless, ornamental “points list” to put on their website and throw in press releases, then any nonsensical system will do.

1. Not every country is ranked/listed
One of the first things you probably noticed when looking at the FIBA rankings is that there are only 73 countries ranked. Maybe you overestimated the number of countries playing international basketball?

You look at the fine print and see that the remaining teams “have all 0 points, and are therefore all positioned, with the same rank, after the last country mentioned”, but then you see that countries like Sri Lanka and Gabon are in the rankings, and that South Africa and India have even accumulated enough points to move away from the bottom of the list.

Meanwhile, teams like Finland—didn’t they just beat France and Italy this summer?—and Georgia—don’t they have some NBA guys?—aren’t even on the list. You are correct in being confused. A ranking that only includes a portion of the teams is obviously less useful than a ranking that includes every team.

Does Finland’s zero points actually mean that they’re worse than Liberia, or just that FIBA is too lazy to come up with a way to rank them? Awarding points only for performance in zonal and world championships clearly penalizes solid teams in deeper zones, while rewarding teams in weaker zones.

Additionally, this means that qualifying games for zonal championships—a large proportion of the meaningful, competitive international games played around the world—are totally ignored. Less data = less accurate rankings. Which brings us to our next point…

2. The point system is totally arbitrary
How did FIBA come up with the point values for tournament placement? They just made them up.

You could come up with your own point values and weights and they would be just as valid. Maybe more valid, because FIBA’s arbitrary point system doesn’t even make sense for an arbitrary point system.

For example, a tournament championship game is worth 10 points (First place gets 50, second place gets 40), while the often-pointless third game is worth 15 points (Third place gets 30, fourth place gets 15).

In fact, the difference between third and fourth place is bigger than the difference between fourth place and sixteenth place. Who knew third-place games were so important?

The tournament weightings are similarly arbitrary. Why are Americas tournaments worth four times as much as African tournaments? Why not twice as much or six times as much? Again, they just made them up. Further, the whole idea of weighting the zonal tournaments is just a clumsy fudge factor in order to arrive at the “right” rankings. In a proper rating system, differences between teams and zones will arise naturally from the results without any adjustment.

Another downside to the arbitrary point system is that points don’t relate to anything, basketball wise. When Spain has 759 ranking points and Greece has 529 ranking points, what does that really tell me about the relative strengths of the teams?

If Spain plays Greece, what is the probability that they will win? How many points is Spain better than Greece in an average game? What score would you predict between these teams? FIBA’s ranking doesn’t help answer these questions at all.

3. Junior tournaments are counted in the rankings
This is a no-brainer but still has to be mentioned. They even count more than most of the senior zonal championships. They can make separate rankings for junior tournaments if they want.

4. Tournament placement doesn’t give you the most information about the strength of teams
If you know that Team A finished first in a tournament, and Team B finished second, how much does this really tell you about the relative strengths of the teams? In a league system Team A might have finished one game ahead of Team B or twenty games ahead of Team B. In a tournament with a group stage and a knockout stage, tournament placement only tells you what happened in the knockout stage, which is just a small portion of the tournament and is heavily influenced by how favorable a team’s draw is.

Looking at wins and losses would give us an extra level of detail compared to tournament placement, leading to more accuracy. Strength of schedule can be adjusted for easily. However, this still is not fully satisfactory. If Team A beat Team B, did they do it by one points, or by twenty? If Team A went 4-4, were they just an average team, or were they a strong team with bad luck in close games?

If we are to arrive at a set of ratings that accurately reflects the strength of every teams, the only acceptable input is the score of each individual game.

To learn more about the FIBA World Rankings, or check out the current FIBA rankings for men at FIBA.com.