FIBA World Rankings

[juli_rc]

Those are some nice easy point served up to Argentina the AmeriCup tournament win. They and Brazil (host) were the only two teams that took it seriously flooring their top rosters (or near top for Brazil) and they finished 1-2 in a very uncompetitive fashion.

Canada's roster was the worst FIBA roster I can remember going back at least 2 decades (all considering they played decently for such a weak roster thrown together at the last minute). The AmeriCup was so, so bad that we even made the semis (and got a decent point bump because of it).

Argentina is quite the paper #4 right now, they are very much in flux and not a very good team. Lucky for whoever gets into their pool at the WC.

Yes, the exact same thing have been said about Argentina in the last world cup.

But, you are right, at the top 8, Argentina, Lithuania and Serbia are the weakest (only on papers).

[juli_rc]

[mojo13]

With USAs g-leaguers losing to Brazil that could push Spain into the #1 World Ranking.


When was the last time the USA was not #1? Maybe their mid-2000s slump?

[Ridirkulous]

With USAs g-leaguers losing to Brazil that could push Spain into the #1 World Ranking.


When was the last time the USA was not #1? Maybe their mid-2000s slump?

I think the last time was... never!

USA falling out of the top spot has never happened before since the inception of the FIBA World Ranking

[tonia]

Spain #1!!!!!!
https://www.fiba.basketball/rankingmen

[mojo13]

Well...as expected.

This is entirely the USAs choosing. If they are not even going to try and just throw G-Leaguers at the World Cup Qualfiers AND the Americup this will happen.
Easy points to be had at the AmeriCup yet they didn't even bother.


It is fitting as any team that starts David Stockton as their PG, should not have the #1 world ranking.

[Straight forward]

mojo13, my thesis about the Reign of Internationals sound stronger and stronger right? Off course that will never happen as USA just has too big and strong basis of talent (by quantity they will always lead), but not only Spain managed to top 1rst spot historically, but I think France with Wemby will make a lot of trouble in the future, potentially maybe even for USA A team. Momentum is good for such thesis. I sincerely don't see new absolute "freak" in American market who would be chancing the game.

Tatum, Ja, Young, Edwards, Zion as the biggest American superstars for upcoming 5 years most likely. However you would look it's huge fall compared to Kobe, Lebron, KD, Curry, D. Wade. Leonard.

[tonia]

Well, history is written by a team's successes or failures and in a failure noone recalls afterwards whether the team had the best players but for whichever reason their superstars didn't participate with it. Spain has won many titles, so their first position is well deserved!

[Giannis34GOD]

mojo13, my thesis about the Reign of Internationals sound stronger and stronger right? Off course that will never happen as USA just has too big and strong basis of talent (by quantity they will always lead), but not only Spain managed to top 1rst spot historically, but I think France with Wemby will make a lot of trouble in the future, potentially maybe even for USA A team. Momentum is good for such thesis. I sincerely don't see new absolute "freak" in American market who would be chancing the game.

Tatum, Ja, Young, Edwards, Zion as the biggest American superstars for upcoming 5 years most likely. However you would look it's huge fall compared to Kobe, Lebron, KD, Curry, D. Wade. Leonard.

Yeah... and most of US players came out from their youth teams are not so good as before... I mean even LBJ's son Bronny will not be a special as his dad when he enters the league... And they can't produce these days a potential big man out of college... I can't wonder why?

[Giannis34GOD]

Well...as expected.

This is entirely the USAs choosing. If they are not even going to try and just throw G-Leaguers at the World Cup Qualfiers AND the Americup this will happen.
Easy points to be had at the AmeriCup yet they didn't even bother.


It is fitting as any team that starts David Stockton as their PG, should not have the #1 world ranking.

And yet, Most of American people, media, and some players still can't believe that way... I guess they only know Olympics as international sport while lots of tournaments including FIBA WC they were ignored....

[Federoy]

And yet, Most of American people, media, and some players still can't believe that way... I guess they only know Olympics as international sport while lots of tournaments including FIBA WC they were ignored....

Don't lay that on just the American public and media. Most in the basketball community worldwide knows that outside of the Olympics, the US isn't sending it's A+ team. Ultimately, the rankings don't mean anything in terms of measuring the strength of national programs.

[tonia]

Don't lay that on just the American public and media. Most in the basketball community worldwide knows that outside of the Olympics, the US isn't sending it's A+ team. Ultimately, the rankings don't mean anything in terms of measuring the strength of national programs.

European basketball has raised its level and European players stand out in the NBA. US should start sending their best players, if they want to be considered as the strongest team.

[mojo13]

European basketball has raised its level and European players stand out in the NBA. US should start sending their best players, if they want to be considered as the strongest team.

I don't know about that.

Here is a fair list of the Top 100 players in the NBA.
https://nbarankings.theringer.com/
Only three of the Top 30 are European (Giannis, Luka, Jokic). 6 of the Top 50. About 13 of the Top 100.


The vast majority are still American. They could pull a team together from just the 50-100 ranked players and destroy everyone in the world IF (and this is a big IF) they actually built a proper team with the right roles and played together for a small amount of time. You know...build an actual team instead of throwing together a mish-mash of poor fitting players that have never played FIBA or together, practice for a week, play a few exhibition games and then play the event. That give you the 2019 USA World Cup team.

Otherwise yeah...they really need a few of the Top 10 players on the team and that is the 2021 Olympic Gold medal team.

The USA knows what it needs to win. They can win everytime if they were motivated to. Instead they try for the easy path, which usually works for the Olympics (and sometimes the World) but they become vunerable when the Top 20 players don't show (often the Worlds, as the USA doesnt care about that one).

I think this Worlds will have a poor showing and unless they stumble into a well fitted team, with guys in the right roles, with some chemistry I expect they go down in the quarters or semis.




Here is a question....
How do you all think the USA would do in the WC if they just took the Boston Celtics or Golden State Warriors and called that Team USA? Of course remove Wiggins, Horford etc and perhaps (or perhaps not) replace them with equivalents.

[tonia]

I don't know about that.

Here is a fair list of the Top 100 players in the NBA.
https://nbarankings.theringer.com/
Only three of the Top 30 are European (Giannis, Luka, Jokic). 6 of the Top 50. About 13 of the Top 100.


The vast majority are still American. They could pull a team together from just the 50-100 ranked players and destroy everyone in the world IF (and this is a big IF) they actually built a proper team with the right roles and played together for a small amount of time. You know...build an actual team instead of throwing together a mish-mash of poor fitting players that have never played FIBA or together, practice for a week, play a few exhibition games and then play the event. That give you the 2019 USA World Cup team.

Otherwise yeah...they really need a few of the Top 10 players on the team and that is the 2021 Olympic Gold medal team.

The USA knows what it needs to win. They can win everytime if they were motivated to. Instead they try for the easy path, which usually works for the Olympics (and sometimes the World) but they become vunerable when the Top 20 players don't show (often the Worlds, as the USA doesnt care about that one).

I think this Worlds will have a poor showing and unless they stumble into a well fitted team, with guys in the right roles, with some chemistry I expect they go down in the quarters or semis.




Here is a question....
How do you all think the USA would do in the WC if they just took the Boston Celtics or Golden State Warriors and called that Team USA? Of course remove Wiggins, Horford etc and perhaps (or perhaps not) replace them with equivalents.

According to https://nbarankings.theringer.com/, Giannis is 1st, Jokic 3d and Luka 4th of the list of the top 100 players in the NBA, so it is not precise to say that they are just 3 of the top 30 players in the NBA. Besides that, the last four winners of the MVP are European (Giannis (2019,2020) and Jokic (2021, 2022)) - fist time in the history of NBA . Ofcourse, the majority of top 100 players are American but only 12 top players are needed to make up the national team. My point is that European basketball has become more competitive, therefore US team may be really strong but will need to fight hard in order to win a gold medal.

[mojo13]

According to https://nbarankings.theringer.com/, Giannis is 1st, Jokic 3d and Luka 4th of the list of the top 100 players in the NBA, so it is not precise to say that they are just 3 of the top 30 players in the NBA. Besides that, the last four winners of the MVP are European (Giannis (2019,2020) and Jokic (2021, 2022)) - fist time in the history of NBA . Ofcourse, the majority of top 100 players are American but only 12 top players are needed to make up the national team. My point is that European basketball has become more competitive, therefore US team may be really strong but will need to fight hard in order to win a gold medal.

So Slovenia, Greece and Serbia can build a team with 1 Top 20 player each. The USA can still pull together 12 if they wanted to. Greece and Slovenia don't have another player in the Top what? 200? 400?

Just give the USA Players 20-32 on that list and more than a 1 week training camp and they should still smoke most everyone else. It is not a talent question - it is getting the players in the right roles and enough time to build semi-decent chemistry - which they only seem to wake up and do when the lose at the Olmypics.

They just wont the last Olympics - so I doubt they take this World Cup too seriously.

My point is that the talent is still there in abandunce - but the effort or interest really isn't.


As said above the Boston Celtics (less Dominican Al Horford) would roll easily through this World Cup.

[tonia]

So Slovenia, Greece and Serbia can build a team with 1 Top 20 player each. The USA can still pull together 12 if they wanted to. Greece and Slovenia don't have another player in the Top what? 200? 400?

Just give the USA Players 20-32 on that list and more than a 1 week training camp and they should still smoke most everyone else. It is not a talent question - it is getting the players in the right roles and enough time to build semi-decent chemistry - which they only seem to wake up and do when the lose at the Olmypics.

They just wont the last Olympics - so I doubt they take this World Cup too seriously.

My point is that the talent is still there in abandunce - but the effort or interest really isn't.


As said above the Boston Celtics (less Dominican Al Horford) would roll easily through this World Cup.

Slovenia, Greece and Serbia built a team with 1 Top 10 player each in Eurobasket 2022, but none of the three won a medal. It's a fact that many NBA stars don't perform as well in national team tournaments, where they play with FIBA rules. For example, the MVP of last Olympics, Durant, averaged 18 points while he averaged around 27 points with the Nets. It's also a fact that the US team is no longer unbeatable (they lost, for instance, against France in last Olympics). Of course there is a lot of talent in the US team but they will probably need to make some effort in order to win the gold medal in the World cup. About the example of Boston Celtics, I would say that if not all, almost all national teams don't have enough preparation time, so any NBA team would have a great advantage. Otherwise, who knows if Boston Celtics would perform as well in a FIBA tournament with a smaller court, no defensive 3 second violation, etc..

[Giannis34GOD]

I don't know about that.

Here is a fair list of the Top 100 players in the NBA.
https://nbarankings.theringer.com/
Only three of the Top 30 are European (Giannis, Luka, Jokic). 6 of the Top 50. About 13 of the Top 100.


The vast majority are still American. They could pull a team together from just the 50-100 ranked players and destroy everyone in the world IF (and this is a big IF) they actually built a proper team with the right roles and played together for a small amount of time. You know...build an actual team instead of throwing together a mish-mash of poor fitting players that have never played FIBA or together, practice for a week, play a few exhibition games and then play the event. That give you the 2019 USA World Cup team.

Otherwise yeah...they really need a few of the Top 10 players on the team and that is the 2021 Olympic Gold medal team.

The USA knows what it needs to win. They can win everytime if they were motivated to. Instead they try for the easy path, which usually works for the Olympics (and sometimes the World) but they become vunerable when the Top 20 players don't show (often the Worlds, as the USA doesnt care about that one).

I think this Worlds will have a poor showing and unless they stumble into a well fitted team, with guys in the right roles, with some chemistry I expect they go down in the quarters or semis.




Here is a question....
How do you all think the USA would do in the WC if they just took the Boston Celtics or Golden State Warriors and called that Team USA? Of course remove Wiggins, Horford etc and perhaps (or perhaps not) replace them with equivalents.

But if you compare to that 1990-2000s to this current era, team USA is not untouchable now.. France can beat US even the latter will bring their best players... If France wins in the Embiid Sweepstakes over USA then that's the big problem for team USA, Wembayanma can slide down to 4 (or even 3 in some situations) and if he's healthy and improving that the scouts expect to him (bigger KD), No one in current team USA version can match up on him 1 on 1... how can you block his jumpshots? He's too tall and his midrange or sometimes money!!! If KD is already unstoppable in FIBA competitions then if he (Wemby) develops the same way as KD? Then team USA will be in trouble anytime he's there for France....

[Giannis34GOD]

So Slovenia, Greece and Serbia can build a team with 1 Top 20 player each. The USA can still pull together 12 if they wanted to. Greece and Slovenia don't have another player in the Top what? 200? 400?

Just give the USA Players 20-32 on that list and more than a 1 week training camp and they should still smoke most everyone else. It is not a talent question - it is getting the players in the right roles and enough time to build semi-decent chemistry - which they only seem to wake up and do when the lose at the Olmypics.

They just wont the last Olympics - so I doubt they take this World Cup too seriously.

My point is that the talent is still there in abandunce - but the effort or interest really isn't.


As said above the Boston Celtics (less Dominican Al Horford) would roll easily through this World Cup.

Yeah, But the problem for team USA has always the commitment, loyalty for the country and preparation... Let's see next year who will play for team USA in Manila? I heard Tyler Herro wants to play and he's committed to that....

[mojo13]

Yeah, But the problem for team USA has always the commitment, loyalty for the country and preparation... Let's see next year who will play for team USA in Manila? I heard Tyler Herro wants to play and he's committed to that....

Oh wow...Tyler Herro...bring home the gold.


The problem for Team USA is not ALWAYS the commitment, loyalty for the country and preparation. But USUALLY it is.

They get complacent. It seems only after failing to win gold at an Olympics do they re-committ to loyalty for the country and preparation. Watch The Redeem Team documentary on Netflix. I am almost certain Team USA needs to be embarrassed at the Paris 2024 Olympics (probably by France) for USA Basketball and the players to re-commit to the prgram an build a real team again.

I think this World Cup they once again fall to win the gold (maybe not even a medal). But I'm not sure anyone will care too much and they won't adjust for the 2024 Olympics.

Maybe you are right....maybe this time they don't have the young Lebron, Anthony, Wade, Bosh to put with a killer Kobe to pull it all together. But I still think they do - there is enough young talent among Morant, Zion, Trae, Tatum, Booker, Brown, Edwards, Garland and some still Top 20 vets in Curry, Durant, Lillard, James to pull it all togather.

[Giannis34GOD]

Oh wow...Tyler Herro...bring home the gold.


The problem for Team USA is not ALWAYS the commitment, loyalty for the country and preparation. But USUALLY it is.

They get complacent. It seems only after failing to win gold at an Olympics do they re-committ to loyalty for the country and preparation. Watch The Redeem Team documentary on Netflix. I am almost certain Team USA needs to be embarrassed at the Paris 2024 Olympics (probably by France) for USA Basketball and the players to re-commit to the prgram an build a real team again.

I think this World Cup they once again fall to win the gold (maybe not even a medal). But I'm not sure anyone will care too much and they won't adjust for the 2024 Olympics.

Maybe you are right....maybe this time they don't have the young Lebron, Anthony, Wade, Bosh to put with a killer Kobe to pull it all together. But I still think they do - there is enough young talent among Morant, Zion, Trae, Tatum, Booker, Brown, Edwards, Garland and some still Top 20 vets in Curry, Durant, Lillard, James to pull it all togather.

Morant, Zion, Tatum, etc... are not the same or level that the likes of LBJ, Melo and Wade brings to team USA... I don't know why... I see something missing to the current generation of American ballers especially in killer instinct... If not for KD, The 2021 Olympic gold will be on France... Actually team USA was lucky that the tournament was postponed... If the Olympics was not postponed last 2020... Team USA will not win the gold because KD still recovering from injury that time