For me, I got a few things from this tournament.
China has found its groove without Yao Ming. Even without new team leader Yi Jianlian, China is still in my opinion the best team in Asia. Their young talent is developing quite nicely and the team doesn't look to be in a rebuilding stage as we may have thought.
Iran is also a pretty solid team without Hamed Haddadi. They, like China, have a few nice players from the B team making solid contributions. It will be interesting to see them square off against China in FIBA-Asia 2011.
For Smart Gilas, I was not at all disappointed and I think we should feel good about the team. It overcame a loss to an athletic and talented Japeth Aguilar and an injured Sol Mercado. I think Asi Taulava proved he can still play on the FIBA stage and has the potential to be a great backup to Marcus Douthit. Kelly Williams, while not scoring often, made up for it by being one of the top rebounders in the tournament. His athleticism and skill is valuable to this team. I think everyone could agree that this team in improving greatly and that Coach Rajko needs to remain the coach. As we talked about back in 2008/2009, we need continuity and it starts with the coach.
Japan was right about where I expected. Missing some key players, they still played well. Coach Tom Wisman is doing quite well, but Japan have been at this level for quite sometime. For what has seemed like for years now, Japan has struggled to crack into the top with China, South Korea, and now Iran and arguably Lebanon.
Korea, for all the buildup and training, I feel like let us all down. Their defense is better, but has it compromised the offense? They seemed to be shooting a lower clip than usual, especially from three-point land. I think that if they play more together and under their system, they will be better.
Qatar was really inconsistent, which suprised me slightly but they took so many injuries. Targuy Ngombo once again was phenomenal but this tournament proved that Qatar cannot win with just Ngombo.
Chinese Taipei were the odd team out in the prelims but in reality, they were the 5th best in Group B. Tien Lei was relatively quiet in the tournament.
India is still well off and is still near the bottom of the FIBA-Asia squads.
Mongolia was a pleasant suprise as they played pretty well. Their 7-footer did not play much and is old, so it was nice to see them still put up a fight.
North Korea, despite a small team, did ok. They played like Angola by just bombing threes away like no tomorrow and trying to beat you on the perimeter.
Uzbekistan has a great talent in Aleksandr Juginisov. If they can build a solid team around it, they will be a solid team.
Turkmenistan needs to enter more competitions. They gave Mongolia a battle and they seems to have a great PG and F.
