By Aris Barkas / barkas@eurohoops.net
When it was first announced that FIBA World Championship will be rebranded as FIBA World Cup, the notion that basketball is following the steps of football was more than evident. That was confirmed by NBA commissioner David Stern in the ESPN Radio show “The Herd With Colin Cowherd”.
The main topic of the show discussion was the injury of Chicago Bulls star Derrick Rose, but Stern dropped a bomb in the international basketball scene: “My own view is that post-London, we should be thinking about what soccer does and make it 23 and under”.
After the appearance of the original Dream Team in the Olympics of 1992, the basketball tournament became one of the marquee events of the Games. The global explosion of the sport in part was a consequence of 1992’s Olympics, but 20 years later the tables are turned. FIBA wants more teams competing in the Olympic tournament and not just 12, something that IOC is not accepting, probably because it doesn’t want basketball dominating the schedule of the Olympics.
This is where the idea of the expanded FIBA World Cup enters. FIFA have succeed in making the World Cup one of the biggest global sports brands and the Olympic football tournament is just a youth competition. FIBA and NBA must be thinking the same. After all it’s plain stupid for them to “lend” their best international games to the IOC and getting peanuts for them in return.