Which countries will get the FIBA Wild Cards?
The FIBA Wild Cards will determine four teams’ fates for the 2010 World Championships of basketball.
With a few days remaining before FIBA announces their selections, which countries do you think FIBA will select for the event in Turkey in 2010? Below are Interbasket’s top 11 contenders:
Cameroon- Dominican Republic
- Germany
- Great Britain
- Korea
- Lebanon
- Lithuania
- Nigeria
- Poland
- Russia
- Taiwan
Seems that Interbasket members mostly agree that Russia and Germany will be locks to receive a ticket to the huge basketball event.
Go to our forum and pick the four countries that you think FIBA will choose based on their criteria of sporting, economics, and governing factors with a maximum of three wild cards from any one zone (that means you, Europe!).
It’s already been hinted that the sporting factor will weigh more heavily, benefiting teams from Europe and the Americas.
After the Wild Cards have been determined, the draw for the World Championships will be held at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski Hotel, Istanbul on Tuesday, 15th December 2009 at 11:30AM local time.
Canada already qualified for the World Championship, check it out on the tournament website!
December 9th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
Ah, correct! We’ve edited the article.
December 9th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
the wild card for lebanon becuse lebanon is unjustice against china in asia
December 10th, 2009 at 3:04 am
[...] The rest isn’t much more difficult, actually. Interbasket lists nine other apparently viable contenders for wild cards [...]
December 11th, 2009 at 2:40 am
I think lebanon deserves a wild card, for many aspects:
1. They have participated in the last two world championships, which shows they have some good experience in this tournament, and they have greatly improved from one championship to another (winning 0 games in the first, but beating France and venezuela in 2006!!!)
2.Basket-ball is the most popular sport in lebanon, in every street you can find a basket-ball basket , and players too !!
3. Economically, lebanon is very close to turkey(they can get to turkey even by bus), and as everyone has noticed in multiple tournaments the lebanese attendance is always the biggest in asia!(for example in doha quatar in 2007, when lebanon played against quatar there was more lebanese than local people in court. And of course, this would be a good attraction for turkey!
4. Lebanon showed that it actually has a great basket-ball team, with 2 ex-NBA players (Mathew Freije, and Jackson vroman), and many of the finest players in asia (Fady el khatib, rony Fahed, and many others…), and it had almost beaten China in their first game, and deserved winning the second, but the HUGE referee mistake !!!! costed lebanon it’s place in the final, (lebanon was up one point with ball possession, it ended up, down 2 because of the unfair foul !!) Even fiba asia admitted the mistake !
The mistake is human, so we have to accept it, but we can correct the situation now !
Let’s grant Lebanon a well deserved wild Card!
December 12th, 2009 at 2:01 am