Olympic Qualifying Tournament - CROATIA

[Dtown]

Brazil absolute class today 102 - 74 over a decent Mexican side. Going to take a big effort to knock them out tomorrow.

[Toruko]

Bojane showing who is the real NBA player on the court.

[Toruko]

This wont go well for Croatia. I mean if you have 10 TOs in 15 minutes you cant win a game.

[Shawshank]

By far the best game today yet! Very physical battle in every possession.

Germany is better prepared and deeper team,but Bogdanovich with Hezonja refusing to give up.

Mario in 2016 was brainless softie

In 2021 still brainless but atleast a man that really cares and competes hard.

[neo]

germany vs brazil in d finals

[Dtown]

Germany wins, sending the first home team out.

Brazil is definitely the favorite tomorrow but hoping for a good game.

[JGX]

You guys like to pick on Canada or Turkey, but Brazil is the actual team that never wins the big game.

[Terrorizer]

You guys like to pick on Canada or Turkey, but Brazil is the actual team that never wins the big game.

Germany is simply a better and deeper team. Alex Garcia and Retardajao still playing big minutes for Brazil, and this is not some 2012 for a team with such a duo to get through any serious competition. Well, at least they didn't force Leandrinho out of retirement (what a funny if ultimately idiotic player he was, generally he was such a disaster for his own team... but he was funny).

The three things Germany had to do for Brazil not to have any significant chances were: 1) to defend Benite really hard (Brazil's only top-notch shooter and generally their best player); 2) not letting Bruno Caboclo to run like a deer; 3) hoping Marcelinho won't have enough fitness and playing time to organize semi-reasonable offense for Brazil. I haven't watched the game itself but judging by Benite's shooting percentage, Marcelinho's playing time and Caboclo's scoring Germans did most of these things right.

Just foreigners.

Well, then in Turkey there are only "just foreigners" balling. And, well, Nizhny Novgorod beat solid European teams this season in BCL with roster made up mostly from Russians (most of whom didn't made it even to this subpar Russian squad).

and to think this is actually a country with such rich basketball traditions, this kind of downfall is truly a head-scratcher imo

No big mystery.

CSKA crooks raiding federation and sending this already corrupt and not very effective institution into headdive towards abysmal depths of incompetency, idiotic VTB league with only 8 Russian teams (less than some Luxembourg) playing top-tier local basketball with no quotas for local players plus continuing conflicts between coaching staff, players, federation and clubs. Look how many players from the initial roster decided to skip this tournament just because they didn't want to play. Organizationally we're in the state of the most terrible disarray.

One thing is not to have that retard Shved who always made NT a worse team, the other thing when not only Kurbanov and Bolomboy but also players of Zubkov caliber decide that there's no point for them in playing for NT.

As doubtful Stalin's quote proclaims "Every mistake has a name and a surname". Here I can easily name the three main "mistakes": Sergei Ivanov, Sergei Kuschenko, Andrei Vatutin. These are the scumbags who initiated this downfall.

Bazarevich told in an interview "Everyone in Russia thinks that our basketball is dead, but I don't think so". Nuff said. I will not remind you that Russia made medal finishes in Olympics-2012 and Eurobasket-2011 but this is a current state of affairs in the country whose national team was fourth in the last EuroBasket. By the way, it was the only tournament since 2012 when we had a surprisingly well-organized and serious preparation but that definitely was a mysterious fluke. And basketball-wise things are getting worse and worse here (not only in my home city of Khimki).

Yep, you're right, up to mid-2010s we had one of the richest and most successful basketball traditions in Europe but right now we're definitely on our way towards basketball irrelevance. As previous US president likes to say... sad. But this is a totally predictable scenario.

[Terrorizer]

You should have more faith in your "tribe", Maksim

Look who's talking. Traditional sturdiness and gutsy character, the things any Lietuva basketball NT lives and dies by, weren't enough not to be owned by Luka, aided by 7 mpg NBA player, Mike Tobey, Klemen Prepelic, a couple of washed up (yet previously solid) players and guys from all those Gravelines and Cholets. Not extremely surprising when your best backcourt option after classy Grigonis is 34 y.o. Mantas (with all due respect to the latter). Judging by your avatar, it seems that you haven't prayed hard enough to your pagan gods for your "tribe".

[juli_rc]

You guys like to pick on Canada or Turkey, but Brazil is the actual team that never wins the big game.

You're absolutely right. They can defeat the USA, and the next day lose against Chile.

[ChuckDiesel2]

What a disaster of a tournament for Croatia. Sad for a country with so much talent and tradition to put that product on the floor.

[ChuckDiesel2]

Where was Krunoslav Simon by the way?