The FIBA World Cup 2014 starts a week from Saturday. Jonas Valanciunas is playing and let's hope that Demar Derozan makes the cut for the USA team.
Some points of interest are:
Spain is host and has never beaten the USA in head to head competition in the World Championship or Olympics. They are a very experienced unit and have all their top players on board for this tournament.
The USA squad will be deep with 12 NBA players and well prepared but are missing so many of their top players in LBJ, Durant, Chris Paul, Paul George, Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, Lamarcus Aldridge, and Derrick Rose may not be ready. Coach K is 64-1 in FIBA competition since 2005.
France is without Parker, Noah, and De Colo who are injured. Other teams missing NBA players are Argentina (Ginobli and Delfino), Australia (Bogut and Mills), New Zealand (Adams), Finland (Jerebko), Serbia (Nedovic) and Turkey (Kanter and Ilyasova).
Former Raptors playing - Jose Calderon, Roko Ukic, Leandro Barbosa, Carlos Arroyo, Rudy Gay and David Anderson. Hamed Haddadi was briefly on the Raptors roster though he never played a game for Toronto.
Canada did not qualify.
Teams play a round robin in 4 groups of 6 with the top 4 teams from each group qualifying for the 16 team knockout bracket. Lithuania and Spain is a potential semi final match up.
Some points of interest are:
Spain is host and has never beaten the USA in head to head competition in the World Championship or Olympics. They are a very experienced unit and have all their top players on board for this tournament.
The USA squad will be deep with 12 NBA players and well prepared but are missing so many of their top players in LBJ, Durant, Chris Paul, Paul George, Kevin Love, Blake Griffin, Lamarcus Aldridge, and Derrick Rose may not be ready. Coach K is 64-1 in FIBA competition since 2005.
France is without Parker, Noah, and De Colo who are injured. Other teams missing NBA players are Argentina (Ginobli and Delfino), Australia (Bogut and Mills), New Zealand (Adams), Finland (Jerebko), Serbia (Nedovic) and Turkey (Kanter and Ilyasova).
Former Raptors playing - Jose Calderon, Roko Ukic, Leandro Barbosa, Carlos Arroyo, Rudy Gay and David Anderson. Hamed Haddadi was briefly on the Raptors roster though he never played a game for Toronto.
Canada did not qualify.
Teams play a round robin in 4 groups of 6 with the top 4 teams from each group qualifying for the 16 team knockout bracket. Lithuania and Spain is a potential semi final match up.
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