This tournament will be held from 2 July to 8 July 2012 to determine the final 3 qualifiers for the 2012 Olympics basketball tournament. The host is undetermined, but Venezuela, Lithuania, Puerto Rico, and Macedonia have expressed an interest in hosting it. The groups have not been decided but the pots have: Pot 1 (Africa+Asia): Angola, Nigeria, Jordan, South Korea Pot 2 (Americas+Oceania): Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, New Zealand Pot 3 (Europe): Russia, Macedonia, Lithuania, Greece As you can tell, there will be 4 groups of 3. Top two in the group make it to quarterfinals. Winning semifinalists qualify for the Olympics while the losing semifinalists contend for the final berth.
Why bother? None of these teams stand any chance against the USA. The last FIBA World Cup saw the US win every game [except the Final against Turkey and of the group matches vs Brazil] by at least 20 with a 3rd string team.
Funny, I just saw an article today worrying about the US team's gold medal chances. http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7836691/welcome-back-mailbag I don't follow the NBA, but when international basketball comes around I get all sorts of thrills and chills. This article above got me thinking about it this summer. Excited
Basketball is a one-team sport dominated by the USA, which can just field the biggest, tallest, fastest, and strongest players humanly possible, whereas in soccer, you don't have to be a mutant to play it. Soccer is not always dominated by one country, like Basketball is with regards to the USA.
You're right but it's still an honor for a lot of those countries to be able to compete in the Olympics even if they know USA is way better. And it should actually be a very interesting tournament since Lithuania, Greece, Russia, Puerto Rico are all pretty good teams. It should be very competitive. Not related to this but the Centrobasket tournament is currently being held in PR and 5 Cuban players have deserted the team and asked for political asylum.
