MIES (Switzerland) – It’s going to be another busy summer in international basketball, starting with the four FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments next week.
Only the four winners will advance to the 2024 Men’s Olympic Basketball Tournament Paris 2024, meaning there will be 20 heartbroken others from the four tournaments. The teams went through their preparation games, there’s just enough time left for our Power Rankings before the crucial games tip-off in Greece, Latvia, Puerto Rico, and Spain.
Basketball is growing with each passing season in this part of the world, and having Bahrain in the battle for the Olympics spot is another step for the future of the sport there.
They are more and more competitive, their national champs Manama are also putting Bahrain on the basketball map with their FIBA West Asia Super League triumph and an appearance at the FIBA Intercontinental Cup in 2023.
But while they are improving, they have a mountain to climb in Puerto Rico, as they are stuck in a group with the hosts and Italy.
Three big defeats to Lithuania in the preparation camp. They’ve got Spain and Angola in their group in Valencia, and they know they’ll have to replicate their game against France from last summer’s FIBA Basketball World Cup if they want to have a fighting chance for the Semi-Finals, and for an Olympic ticket afterwards.
It will be even thougher for then with superstar Wael Arakji not available to suit up in Spain.
Two positives from their preparation camp are that, (1) they know how to win games on offense, as evident by their 78-74 win over Egypt when captain Fabien Ateba knocked down seven three-pointers, and (2) they know how to win games on defense, as evident by holding Georgia to 66 points in the other game.
The problematic part is that their group rivals Brazil and Montenegro both looked really good before flying to Latvia, so it’s going to be tough escaping that group for Cameroon.
There was plenty of optimism around this generation and this team, especially after Mo Bamba arrived in Motherland, as he calls it.
But optimism and hope evaporated really fast, judging by the 300+ comments on Côte d’Ivoire’s recent 91-84 defeat to Portugal in one of their preparation games.
Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe those defeats in friendlies make them work extra hard to get a win in Puerto Rico. But Lithuania and Mexico are not the kind of teams who offer you a lot of chances to defeat them.
They lost to Türkiye and Poland as they prepared for their Latvian adventure this summer, but one bright spot was the eternal Justin Brownlee. The 36-year-old forward topped the scoring charts in both of their games, he counted to 30 against Poland so expect him to be in the hunt for the top scorer honors.
Latvia could be an assignment too tough for the Philippines, but against Georgia, they could search for that win that propels them into the closing stages of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament.
They are waking up, again. For such a long time, Angola were the dominant force in African basketball, winning 11 of the 13 FIBA AfroBasket tournaments between 1989 and 2013, but they have been on their way down since that last continental trophy.
It seemed there were steps in the right direction taken already last summer, and putting together a team with Bruno Fernando, Jilson Bango, as well as the last three Angolan League MVPs in Aboubakar Gakou, Gerson Goncalves and the electric point guard Childe Dundao, maybe Angola deserved a spot or two higher on this list.
They will face Spain and Lebanon in Group A in Valencia.
The good thing? They are back on the basketball map and were inches away from a direct ticket to the Olympics last summer, when they outperformed most people’s expectations at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023.
The bad thing? They are stuck in a tournament with European juggernauts Greece, Slovenia and Croatia, along with the Dominican Republic and New Zealand.
Is there life without Lauri Markkanen? Sure there is. Just check out this block from their latest wunderkind, the 2007-born Miikka Muurinen, still a high school kid, but also a national team kid, as well.
That being said, they are down in 17th because of their FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 struggles, and because Markkanen is just that kind of a superhero who could make them a top five team, easily, and his value is probably too great for Finland, no matter how talented the new Susijengi big guys are.
They warmed up for their Puerto Rico trip with three games against the select team of Argentina, and those turned out to be quite competitive, with Mexico taking the first two wins, and Argentine youngsters bouncing back to win the third matchup.
Mexico should be safe for at least the Semi-Finals in their OQT, but that’s the thing with this team, you never know which kind of Mexico you’re going to get. They are pretty much the same team that almost made it to the Olympics in 2021, fighting through the OQT in Split, Croatia. But they are also pretty much the same team that went 0-3 against Lithuania, Montenegro and Egypt at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023…
Sure, all of the talks were about Jeremy Sochan finally joining the team and playing in front of his own fans in Katowice. But Poland have their own guy for this debate we posted on our socials not that long ago:
Mateusz Ponitka just goes crazy whenever he’s wearing red-and-white. He had 19 points in 20 minutes against Brazil, and followed it up with 29 points, 6 rebounds and 6 assists in just 23 minutes of work against New Zealand.
If Poland manage to get from this 15th spot all the way to the Olympics, it’s going to be because of Ponitka’s positive craziness on the court, for sure.
The initial idea was to have Georgia in the top ten, because any time Aleksandar Dzikic is coaching a competitive team, and any time Tornike Shengelia is playing a competitive game, you kinda expect them to figure it out and win it. And it would go in line with the rise of Georgian basketball, with their first ever trip to the World Cup and a solid top 16 campaign.
Then, when we saw the results of their preparation games, the idea was to have Georgia in the bottom five of the Power Rankings. So consider this 14th place a compromise.
With Karl-Anthony Towns and/or Al Horford on board, especially when they are coached by Che Garcia, the Dominican Republic would’ve probably been in the top five here. However, even without the two NBA stars, they are a resilient team, and Chris Duarte is turning into a new leader this summer.
Duarte had 27 points against Spain to warm up for the event in Greece, and he’s exactly the kind of figure that Jean Montero and Andres Feliz needed to open up the floor for their drives and kicks.
They will still be a dangerous team at the Olympic Qualifying Tournament. It’s just that they have to take down either Giannis and Greece or Luka and Slovenia – or both – to make their first Olympics ever.
Sure. Their preparation games looked horrible. But this 12th place is a testament to what they showed back at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023. Not their results there, but their play. Because these guys were up by 10 against USA, and they had a 15-point lead against Greece that could’ve put them among the sweet 16, but they couldn’t hold on to it.
The physicality will be there with Shea Ili, Reuben Te Rangi, Izayah Le’afa, Finn Delany and Yanni Wetzell, and now they’ve got a veteran in Corey Webster right next to them. This is a solid team, don’t be fooled by their horrid shooting in friendlies this summer.
The population of Montenegro is just above 600,000, and most of those 600,000 are tall enough to play basketball. Nikola Vucevic is back with the team, of course, and it will be interesting to see what Kendrick Perry does, fresh off of leading Unicaja to the BCL championship in Europe.
Let’s not talk about the 86-57 defeat to Greece for now, okay? Okay.
Mix of generations coming together for coach Aco Petrovic and Brazil. The indestructible Marcelinho Huertas is dreaming of reaching the Olympics at 41 years of age, Raul Neto is making a comeback after that horrible injury at the World Cup, and new guys are coming in led by Gui Santos, the 22-year-old from the Golden State Warriors.
Their preparation games proved two things, (1) coach had a tough time trying to trim the team to 12 names, and (2) that ball will be moving no matter who is out there on the court. In Marcelinho, Raul, Yago, Georginho de Paula, they have at least four guys who can get 10+ assists in a single game.
This is Mario Hezonja’s team now.
Real Madrid’s forward joined the record books with a 39-point performance against Brazil, and the way he moved and scored, it felt like Drazen Petrovic’s all-time mark of 48 points was in danger.
This way, Hezonja takes the second spot in single game scoring records for Croatia, edging out Bojan Bogdanovic’s 38-point performance against Germany at the last FIBA OQT.
But… Since Croatia lost that one, Hezonja probably wouldn’t mind scoring 3 or 9 instead of 39 this summer, as long as it means the checkered pattern skies towards the Olympics. Speaking of patterns, Croatian won the OQTs in 2008 and 2016. Every eight years, huh… Which means… Right? Right.
We’re just joining the Bahamas bandwagon, don’t mind us. Plenty of headlines were made when Klay Thompson joined their training camp, and plenty of them were deleted or saved for later because the Golden State Warriors legend will not be playing for the Bahamas.
Plenty of headlines were made as Eric Gordon, Buddy Hield and Deandre Ayton stunned the world last summer and won the FIBA Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament in Argentina, and plenty of them were deleted or saved for later because the Bahamas struggled shooting the ball this summer to an absurd level.
But if Gordon and Hield don’t go on one of those 1-of-10 shooting slumps, and if Ayton grabs all the rebounds available, would it be such a surprise to see them at the Olympics?
Hey, Italian national basketball team. Just wanted to have a quick chat with you. See, we don’t want to put pressure on anybody. We know what you’re capable of, we were there in 2021, we saw it, front row, right there.
It’s just that your entire nation needs something big now that the football team messed up. Put some smiles on your people’s faces again, you can do it!
(On a serious note, these guys defeated Spain in Spain, so yeah, they could totally do it.)
Puerto Rico anywhere in the world? Okay, could be fun, probably would be fun.
Puerto Rico at home? OH SIGN US UP FOR THIS!
They were so close to reaching the World Cup Quarter-Finals last summer, but it was Italy who kept them at bay in that do-or-die battle in Manila. Now they get to face Italy again, with their fans in the stands, and Jose Alvarado joining Tremont Waters in that high octane backcourt.
This is their biggest chance to end the 20-year long, because the last time they made the Olympics was in 2004. Yep. When they defeated the USA by 19, you remember it.
Yeah, remember everything that you just read about Puerto Rico? Well, Lithuania are in their tournament, so Puerto Rico can use the underdog approach because Lithuania are hot favorites to win everything wherever they show up.
And this time, they are coming in after a solid FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 campaign, and with a lot of added motivation in the fact that they could not convert their home court advantage into an Olympic ticket three years ago.
First lesson of any kind of Power Rankings in any competition: Put Spain in the top five, even if they show up with their U14 team.
Coach Sergio Scariolo has preached about their systematic work over the years, and they’ve come to a point where the senators are now welcoming in the young guns who weren’t even born back when the senators started their careers.
Rudy Fernandez played at the Olympics in 2004. Sergio Llull began his professional career in 2005. Sergio de Larrea was born in December 2005. And they are now sharing the same La Familia locker room.
That’s how you build a culture. That’s how you make winning a habit in the long run.
Imagine not having your best player and still being one of the hottest teams in the world. Kristaps Porzingis will miss out on Latvia’s quest towards the Olympics, but the others just went, “oh well” and decided to play their pass-first brand of basketball even faster.
Arturs Zagars and Rihards Lomazs are both back from injuries, and both of them are perfect for coach Luca Banchi’s ideas on the court. Playing at home in Riga, they are four steps away from reaching their first Olympics since 1936.
Just in case you wondered if Luka Doncic was feeling fine after the long and exhausting NBA Finals run with the Dallas Mavericks.
Yep. He’s fine. In a perfect position in the Power Rankings, too, because being the runner up makes Slovenia the hunters, not the hunted ones, and it allows them to do what they did in 2021: stun the home crowd, steal the win, go on an impressive Olympics campaign.
So what’s the answer for Luka and Slovenia? We don’t know, but having Giannis Antetokounmpo working with coach Vassilis Spanoulis sounds like a solid start.
Greece introduced their new look team this summer, with coach Spanoulis finding the right balance between Nick Calathes and Thomas Walkup when it comes to setting up plays and passing the ball, and surrounding Giannis with Kostas Papanikolaou and Georgios Papagiannis in the frontcourt.
Don’t forget about other valuable team players like Kostas Antetokounmpo, Dinos Mitoglou, Panagiotis Kalaitzakis or Giannoulis Larentzakis, they’ve all got the green light to shoot the ball and take some of the load off of Giannis.
They looked so well balanced and in control during their preparation games. With the home crowd behind them, why not repeat it at the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament in Piraeus next week?
*The power rankings are entirely subjective and are in no way a true and accurate ranking system. All comments are purely those of the author.
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