THE 28th renewal of the FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship is fast approaching. The biennial competition featuring 16 countries will be held from September 23 to October 3 in Changsa, Hunan province in the People’s Republic of China.
This marks the third time in four editions that powerhouse China will be hosting the FIBA Asia Men’s Basketball Championship, having also played host in 2009 in Tianjin and two years later in Wuhan.
Significantly, the defending titlist Islamic Republic of Iran has won the Asian cagefest in three of the past four stagings.
The Iranians, who have been rated first in the pre-tournament the FIBA Power Rankings (ahead of No. 2 China, No. 3 Philippines and fourth seed Chinese-Taipei), whipped Lebanon, 74-69, in the 2007 finals in Tokushima, Japan; stunned the predominantly Chinese crowd with a 70-52 rout of the “home” team, in the 2009 finals in Tianjin; and shellacked host Philippines, 85-71, in the 2013 finals.
Iran failed to qualify for the semifinals in the 2011 Wuhan games topped by China against Jordan, 70-69, in the finals behind tournament Most Valuable Player and National Basketball Association veteran Yi Jianlian.
The bulky 7-foot-2 man-mountain Hamed Haddadi, the tournament MVP in each of Iran’s three championship finishes, will again banner the team this year. A two-time Olympian (2008 Beijing and 2012 London), the 30-year-old Haddadi suited up in the professional Chinese Basketball Association during the 2014-15 campaign after five seasons in the NBA with the Memphis Grizzlies, Toronto Raptors and Phoenix Suns from 2008-13.
The 16 participating teams in the 2015 FIBA Asia Championship have been divided into four groups of four teams each. Group A: Iran, Japan, India and Malaysia; Group B: Hong Kong, Palestine, Kuwait and Philippines; Group C: South Korea, Jordan, Singapore and China; Group D: Chinese-Taipei, Lebanon, Qatar and Kazakhstan.
The top three finishers in the round-robin preliminary phase will advance to the second round. The qualifiers from Group A and Group B will form Group E while those from Group C and D will compose Group F. The teams will battle the qualifiers from the group they had not faced in the preliminary round while results against the teams in the previous round will be carried over.
The top four finishers in each of the two groups (E and F) in the second round will qualify for the quarterfinals (October 1) with the victors facing each other in cross-pairing matchups with a single-elimination format – E1 vs. F4, F2 vs. E3, F1 vs. E4 and E2 vs. F3.
Based on the aforementioned arrangement, the Philippines will definitely cross path with Iran in the second round and take on possibly Chinese-Taipei or South Korea in the quarterfinals.
The knockout semifinals (October 2) will feature the E1-F4 winner vs. the F2-E3 winner and the F1-E4 winner vs. the E2-F3 winner. The losers will clash in the third-place game and the victors will advance to the finals on October 3.
The champion will earn the lone automatic Asian ticket to the 12-team men’s basketball cast in the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in Brazil next year. The runner-up, third-placer and fourth-placer in the FIBA Asia Championship can still make it to the Carnival by gaining any of the three “wildcard” berths available in an Olympic qualifying tournament set for July 4-10 next year.
So far, only six teams have earned tickets to the Rio Games – host Brazil, reigning FIBA Basketball World Cup champion United States, Nigeria (after defeating 2013 titlist Angola, 74-65, in the AfroBasket title game in Tunisia for its first-ever continental championship), Australia (which whipped New Zealand twice, 71-59 and 89-79, in their two-game, total-points Olympic qualifying Oceania series), Argentina and Venezuela.
Venezuela upset 2004 Olympics gold medalist Argentina, 71-67, in the finals of the FIBA Americas tournament in Mexico City. Both had already snared the two automatic continental tickets to the Rio Olympics even before the game. In the third-place encounter, Canada edged Mexico, 84-83, on a game-winning 20-foot jumper by San Antonio Spurs guard Cory Joseph at the buzzer.
During the semifinals, Argentina avenged its second-round 95-83 loss to 2013 champion Mexico with a 76-70 win over their previous tormentor and Venezuela earned an Olympic berth for the first time since the 1992 Barcelona Games after shattering No. 1 seed Canada’s seven-game winning streak with a controversial 79-78 victory (the referees called a foul against the penalty-plagued Maple Leaf boys managed by two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash with 0.3 seconds left and Venezuelan Gregory Vargas canned his first free throw to break a 78-78 deadlock and then purposely missed on his second to run out the time).
Mexico, Canada and fifth-placer Puerto Rico earned spots to the special qualifying tournament next year. So did runner-up Angola, third-placer Tunisia and fourth-placer Senegal from the AfroBasket games.
The two remaining automatic berths from Europe will be determined on September 20 during the EuroBasket finals in France. Five other teams – those finishing third, fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh in the tournament – will be eligible for the final Olympic qualifying tournament.
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