1. Germany, 2. Serbia, 3. Canada, 4. United States, 5. Latvia, 6. Lithuania, 7. Slovenia, 8. Italy
There is hardly any basketball expert on earth who can guess the final standings of the men’s World Cup tournament held in the Philippines, Japan and Indonesia, which ended on Sunday. it can not be.
Germany won the European Championship in 1993, but in the last 30 years this tournament has not been an influential factor on the international scene, except for the bronze medal in the World Cup that it won in Indianapolis in 2002, which was the exception that confirmed the rule, and only for the best player in the tournament, He was chosen as a genius Dirk Nowitzki He is credited with his great performance. In 2005, he won the silver medal at the European Championships, and then, without a doubt, at last year’s European Championships, the German team he led finished third behind Spain and France, but it was “only one European Championship” and by a wide margin. – No conclusions should be drawn from it. Although based on what we saw in the current World Cup, the European continental championship is highly regarded.
How surprising was it that Germany won the World Cup title, and is it at all surprising that it beat Serbia 83-77 in the final? Laszlo RathgeberVal, the career and strategic director of the National Basketball Academy, looked for the answer. We got it
- Willy-nilly, Serbian aid to German basketball,
- The resurrection of the Serbs after the disastrous failure in the European Championship last year,
- Declaring Nikola Jokic a traitor
- The astonishing dominance of European basketball.
“As we take it – muses Ratgeber, who is currently still in Zagreb, where he teaches selected referees in a course organized by FIBA in Europe. – It should be noted that one of the world’s greatest basketball experts is Svetislav Pesic, who participated in the unforgettable 1987 World Junior Championship in Bormio. Vlade Divac, Toni Kukoc, Dino Radja, Aleksandar Djordjevic He led an amazing Yugoslav national team that destroyed the Americans, and in 2002 he was the national team captain of the gold-medal-winning Yugoslav team at the World Senior Championships in Indianapolis.“
“He managed the Serbian national team at the World Cup in Manila, but Besic holds dual Serbian-German citizenship, and in the 1980s he laid the foundations of modern German basketball and introduced a high-level basketball culture. Not to mention that he was captain of the German national team between 1987 and 1993 and in 2012.”
In other words, Besix has the eternal advantage of getting German basketball where it is now. If you like, he has been setting up the new world champion against his country for many years.
The last two minutes of the final between Germany and Serbia.
Rathgeber, who was born in Novi Sad, also spoke about the Serbian national team, which he knows well.
“It would be a mistake to consider Serbia’s defeat in the final on Sunday as bad luck, because the national team’s arrival in the final was already a great achievement.” – He referred to the coach who won the EuroLeague title with Spartak Moscow in 2009. – In the NBA, Nikola Jokic, two-time MVP, then Vasiliy Mesic, still from Barcelona but now in Oklahoma City, and Nemanja Nedovic, who reinforced the Red Star, were unable to reach the top eight in the last continental competition. year. “And now, without these stars, they won the World Cup final.”
Rathgeber drew attention to an interesting circumstance, which also highlights the difference between European, especially Serbian, and American positions.
“When it became clear that Jokic, an NBA championship winner with the Denver Nuggets, would not participate in the World Cup, he was incredibly attacked by the public and the media.
Specifically, he was called a traitor.
Meanwhile, no one in the United States bothered about it LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry, Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Donovan Mitchell, Jimmy Butler, De’Aaron Fox, Damian Lillard The rest of the stars are playing great matches for the national team.”
We talk about this topic: How surprising is fourth place for the Americans, and is US basketball in crisis?
“The last time the United States managed to win an Olympics in college basketball was 1984, and four years later they came up short in Seoul, fielding a dream team in Barcelona.” The specialist explained. – Since then, the gap between the United States and the world has begun to narrow, in fact, it may have already disappeared, if we consider the fact that in the last five years the best player in European or African basketball has been in the person of Ganesh Antetokounmpo, Nikola Jokic and Joel Embiid. It is typical, for example, that the American school system is unable to produce good centers.
The current USA team was not worthy of the traditions of American basketball.
Return to the German world champions: with a Canadian-Finnish coach with dual nationality, With Jordie Herbert He achieved this success. Herbert also visited Becks for an extended period last year Nurse Nick He was his assistant, both with the Toronto Raptors and on the national team, where Nurse was the national team captain. “By the way, Canada probably had the strongest national team at the World Cup, and it was no coincidence that they beat the United States in the bronze medal game.”
It can be said that Europe has grown up on the Yankees, and the numbers back it up.
“Let’s look at the facts: In the World Cup, there were six European teams in the top eight, and only two from outside Europe. In addition, two of our continent’s strongest goalkeepers, European champions Spain and European finalists France, did not even reach the quarter-finals. I am convinced that if the NBA rules for FIBA tournaments are adopted, that is, FIBA tournaments will also be held on larger NBA arenas, the difference in standards will completely disappear. After all, Europeans will also throw threes from 7.25 metres, not from 6.75 metres.”
A year ago, the Hungarians also faced the new world champions
However, the Germans’ joy was also mixed with some joy: Ingo WeissThe President of the German Federation strongly criticized the new German sports financing system. According to the president, Germany’s historic first success in the World Cup proves this Bottas’ system wasn’t working, they had no chance of winning a medal based on it.
The 1954 Men’s World Cup was held for the first time in the sport. The Germans showed themselves in the elite for the first time at the ninth tournament in 1986: they took thirteenth place in Spain.
Since then, they have reached the championship with minor omissions (1990, 1998, 2014), but played a prominent role only once, in 2002 with the already mentioned bronze medal. Aside from that, they reached the top ten once (in 2006, they finished eighth), but individual positions were sporadic: thirteenth was followed by twelfth, seventeenth and eighteenth. But now, the wins have come back to back: they finished the World Cup with a flawless performance, with a win rate of 8/0.
In the 2022 European Championship, the Hungarian national team faced the third-placed Germans, who ended up as a guest participant there, and in the last round of the group stage they proved their superiority on paper with a 106-71 victory. Their rival, who lost all five of his matches.
