K
karim2
Guest
The subject of this thread sounds weird and unfair since all the teams that we wanted to qualify from Americas did qualify and all the teams that didnt qualify are worse than Lebanon on the terms of Fiba rankings and level as i watched almost all their games ....According to the 4 wildcard teams picked in WBC 2006 they were picked as the best ranked teams(accoring to Fiba rankings) that did not qualify...Serbia(5th),Italy(8th),Puerto Rico(11th) and Turkey(14th).....This is also not 100% true cuz as i remember Canada when we beat them in a friendly game before the championship they were ranked better than Turkey but again Canada is always an exception cuz they are ranked much better than they are now and i am sure Fiba is aware of that since all their good results have come in the early 2000s . Serbia and Turkey did not even do well in the euro qualifiers as the top 6 qualify and these countries could not even get in the top 8 (Russia and another country were 7th and 8th).
In any case if this was the way Fiba was going to pick the teams again Lebanon is only 24th so the only way they will be picked was if the top 20 teams qualify and that already didnt happen when Jordan(39th),Tunisia(42nd) and Cote D'Ivoire(44th) qualified and there is also Nigeria(22nd) and Venezuala(23rd) ahead of Lebanon . If Fiba was to think a bit deeper than this , than Lebanon would be 100% in unless there was some major surprises in Europe and teams like Spain,Greece and Lithuania did not qualify
the way i see it before the 4 teams get picked Europe will have 7 teams,America 5,Africa and Asia 3, and Oceania 2 ....The normal thing to do is to give Europe a max of 2 more cards , Americas 1 and Asia 1 ......Asia,s top 4 teams are so much better than anyone in Africa excluding Angola and Lebanon is by far better than Venezuala and Domincan Republic ..Venezuala is only better by the ranking which is kind of annoying if they c them as better than Leb so even if Fiba take 3 teams from Europe than the 4th team should be Leb . All this + Leb is 1 of the most passionate bball countries in the world which is y a small country like them who had so many war problems got all these results in Basketball since 2001 against much larger and world class countries and many people will argue that it is because of the lebanese americans from outside ..this has happened only this year as we have been in the top 4 in asia in 01 and 03 with only vogel and in 05 and 07 with only vogel and beshara(a lebanese american) so this was never the case ..infact we played better when we had 100% lebanese players like roy samaha,hussein tawbeh and Ali F ....
Lebanon has always been an underrated team and was never considered a top 4 team in asia until 2007 when we did it 3 times in a row ....so if they are underrated in asia than they would definitely be an underrated at the world stage and hopefully Fiba does not take teams like Nigeria(who does not have its full players and placed 7th at the africas champ.) and Venezuala(they did very bad at the americas and still have the same team that lost against us by 10 in the WBC2006 and our team has improved since than)...Lebanon is also so close to Turkey geographicly so if Fiba pick strong teams like Slovenia and Lithuania instead of Lebanon I would understand but to pick teams like Nigeria and Venezuala it would be a tragedy for Fiba as a decision maker and for Lebanon a country which deserves much more . I dont even know how VEN and NIG are above us in the rankings since we did so much better than them in the last 8 years maybe cuz asia is still seen as the weakest continent even though this year we are much better than Africa and also almost at the same level as the americas so if FIBA watches TV they should know how to pick teams and not solely on the rankings ....in 2006 we had 4 teams from asia(Japan as the host) so hopefully this year we will too ....
In any case if this was the way Fiba was going to pick the teams again Lebanon is only 24th so the only way they will be picked was if the top 20 teams qualify and that already didnt happen when Jordan(39th),Tunisia(42nd) and Cote D'Ivoire(44th) qualified and there is also Nigeria(22nd) and Venezuala(23rd) ahead of Lebanon . If Fiba was to think a bit deeper than this , than Lebanon would be 100% in unless there was some major surprises in Europe and teams like Spain,Greece and Lithuania did not qualify
the way i see it before the 4 teams get picked Europe will have 7 teams,America 5,Africa and Asia 3, and Oceania 2 ....The normal thing to do is to give Europe a max of 2 more cards , Americas 1 and Asia 1 ......Asia,s top 4 teams are so much better than anyone in Africa excluding Angola and Lebanon is by far better than Venezuala and Domincan Republic ..Venezuala is only better by the ranking which is kind of annoying if they c them as better than Leb so even if Fiba take 3 teams from Europe than the 4th team should be Leb . All this + Leb is 1 of the most passionate bball countries in the world which is y a small country like them who had so many war problems got all these results in Basketball since 2001 against much larger and world class countries and many people will argue that it is because of the lebanese americans from outside ..this has happened only this year as we have been in the top 4 in asia in 01 and 03 with only vogel and in 05 and 07 with only vogel and beshara(a lebanese american) so this was never the case ..infact we played better when we had 100% lebanese players like roy samaha,hussein tawbeh and Ali F .... Lebanon has always been an underrated team and was never considered a top 4 team in asia until 2007 when we did it 3 times in a row ....so if they are underrated in asia than they would definitely be an underrated at the world stage and hopefully Fiba does not take teams like Nigeria(who does not have its full players and placed 7th at the africas champ.) and Venezuala(they did very bad at the americas and still have the same team that lost against us by 10 in the WBC2006 and our team has improved since than)...Lebanon is also so close to Turkey geographicly so if Fiba pick strong teams like Slovenia and Lithuania instead of Lebanon I would understand but to pick teams like Nigeria and Venezuala it would be a tragedy for Fiba as a decision maker and for Lebanon a country which deserves much more . I dont even know how VEN and NIG are above us in the rankings since we did so much better than them in the last 8 years maybe cuz asia is still seen as the weakest continent even though this year we are much better than Africa and also almost at the same level as the americas so if FIBA watches TV they should know how to pick teams and not solely on the rankings ....in 2006 we had 4 teams from asia(Japan as the host) so hopefully this year we will too ....
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