By Niki Bakouli/ bakouli@eurohoops.net
Turkey’s World Championship was the last time we called this tournament in that way. And there were many good reasons for FIBA wanting to rename it to World Cup (something the federation’s board vote for in 2011). But we had to wait for almost a year, to learn all about their plans.
When FIBA chose to follow the example set by its football counterpart (FIFA), they thought it will be a brilliant idea to move the 2018 tournament back a year, so they will avoid competing with the football World Cup cycle and to adopt FIFA’s qualification system for the World Cup and Olympic tournament: via multiple qualification periods through the year. These periods will be, for the 2019 World Cup, in November 2017, February 2018, June 2018, September 2018, November 2018 and February 2019.
That means during these periods all the championships – all over the world – will have to take a break in order for the players to participate in qualification games. And the NBA won’t be the exception of the general rule.
The first question that arises is if the international basketball governance organization has already found a compromise with the NBA about the new reality, or if they decided first to vote for all the changes and… then to talk with the NBA, Euroleague and any other leagues they might have a problem. And it would be really nice to have FIBA’s answer on the subject, but obviously if they don’t have time for the NBA, for sure they won’t find few minutes to email us back.
That’s the burning question right now and it really doesn’t make any sense for FIBA to impose special qualification periods without first consulting with the best league in the world, where the best players of the world are playing not only from USA, but from many other countries of the basketball elite.
One other change is they will increase the field to 32 teams from 24, despite the globe’s serious economical problems. But then again, you have to give to everybody the opportunity to play in a World Cup, to explore globally the market and find new countries which might not have professional basketball leagues, but they could have money to create one.