THE Greek Freak Giannis Antetokuonmpo of the Milwaukee Bucks is set to become the first reigning NBA Most Valuable Player ever to play in the 18th FIBA Basketball World Cup to be held in China from August 31-September 15.
That’s because most of the top-tier U.S. players in the NBA refused to represent their country in the 32-nation competitions for various reasons from simply rest to health issues.
On the Greek team with the 24-year-old Giannis will be his two other NBA-playing siblings – Kostas (Los Angeles Lakers) and older brod Athanasios “Thanasis” (Milwaukee).
Giannis, who led the Bucks to the best regular record in the NBA last campaign at 60-22, said he would be willing to give up his Maurice Podoloff trophy (that goes to the NBA MVP) for Greece to capture the gold medal in the FIBA World Cup.
Wishful thinking it is.
While Greece is one of only 16 countries to secure a medal in the 69-year World Cup history, it has not reached a podium finish since the 2006 edition in Japan when the Greeks upset the United States in the semifinals, 101-95, before being shellacked by MVP Pau Gasol and Spain in the finals, 70-47. It was the Spaniards’ first gold medal. For the Greeks, it was their only medal finish thus far in the WC competitions.
The U.S. beat Argentina, 96-81, to settle for the bronze.
For bragging purposes, the Philippines is the only Asian country in WC history – take that seas-grabbing China – to earn a podium finish, snaring the bronze medal during the 1954 renewal in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil behind the country’s GOAT, the late Carlos Loyzaga.
In the forthcoming China sojourn, the Greeks are bracketed with New Zealand, Brazil and Montenegro in Group F of the preliminary round that features eight groups of four teams each.
The top two teams in each group will qualify for the round-robin semi-quarterfinal playoffs before the knockout stages.
The Americans are the two-time defending gold medalists in the World Cup. In the 2014 edition in Spain, the Stars and Stripes squad whitewashed upset-conscious Serbia, 129-92, in the finals to finish the 24-nation tournament with a unblemished 9-0 record and an average winning margin of 33 points a game — the third largest among Team USA men’s basketball teams in the World Cup (known as the World Basketball Championship before 2014) and/or Summer Olympics since the FIBA, by a vote of 56-13 on April 7, 1989, no longer distinguished an amateur from a professional, effectively permitting NBA players to join the fun in FIBA-sanctioned international spectacles.
The Americans won every assignment by at least 21 points to become the first World Cup team ever to win by 20 points or more in all their games in a single tournament.
It was also the youngest U.S. team since the NBA first sent its players to the 1992 Barcelona Olympics with its so-called Dream Team.
Melbourne-born Kyrie Irving, then with the Cleveland Cavaliers and now with the Brooklyn Nets, was the tournament’s MVP with averages of 12.1 points and a team-best 3.6 assists an outing.
Houston Rockets guard James Harden topped the Yanks in point production at 14.2 ppg, followed by Golden State’s Klay Thompson (12.7 ppg) and then-Denver Nuggets forward Kenneth Faried (12.4 ppg and a team-high 7.8 rpg).
Other members of the U.S. unit include then-New Orleans Pelicans forward but now-LA Lakers frontliner Anthony Davis (12.3 ppg and a team-best 2.1 blocks) and Golden State’s Stephen Curry (10.7 ppg), then-Chicago Bulls but now Detroit Pistons guard Derrick Rose, then-Sacramento Kings frontcourter but now LA Lakers center DeMarcus Cousins, Detroit’s Andre Drummond and former Toronto Raptors but now San Antonio Spurs swingman DeMar DeRozan.
In the bronze-medal game, France edged Lithuania, 95-93, for its first-ever podium finish.
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For the second straight edition, Team Philippines is playing in the upcoming FIBA World Cup in China.
Then again, I still get goose pimples reminiscing the Philippines’ 81-79 overtime victory over Senegal during the most recent FIBA World Cup competitions in Spain five years ago.
It was the gutsy Filipino cagers’ first win in 40 years while having failed to qualify for the quadrennial spectacle since 1978.
The last time we emerged victorious (twice at that) – came during the 1974 sojourn in San Juan, Puerto Rico when the quadrennial spectacle was still called the World Basketball Championship. Our boys went 2-6 and ranked 13th of 14 teams in that edition. Both victories came in the classification phase – Australia, 101-100, and finally last-placer Central African Republic, 87-86, on July 12, 1974. William Adornado ranked 10th in the tournament in scoring with an 18-point clip, including 20 against the 12th-place Aussies and 22 vs. CAR.
The Philippines hosted the WBC in 1978 and automatically was seeded into the final round where it went 0-8 (including a loss in the 7th-8th place game) with a second-rate, amateur team following the establishment of the professional league PBA in 1975.
Despite the win over Senegal (an early top-four qualifier to the second round), Team Pilipinas failed to advance past the preliminary phase with four consecutive losses to start the tournament, three of which were close calls.
Our boys were beaten by Croatia (81-78 OT), Greece (82-70), Argentina (85-81) and Puerto Rico (77-73) to finish with a 1-4 record. Along with the Puerto Ricans (1-4), the Filipinos failed to qualify for the second round.
The boys left Spain early as there were no classification round games for the first time ever in the tournament that debuted in 1950.
The classification round will return in the 18th FIBA World Cup in China as 16 of the 32 participating teams (expanded from the previous 24) would be falling by the wayside after the prelims play by the eight groups of four teams each.
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Who is the hottest team going into the 32-nation FIBA Basketball World Cup to be held in the People’s Republic of China from August 31-September 15?
Answer: Our Asian neighbor Japan.
The Japanese national team, which is making only its fifth appearance at the quadrennial FIBA World Cup competitions (it was called the World Basketball Championship from 1950 to 2010 before being known as such since 2014) with its highest-ever finish being 11th place (out of 13 teams, 2-6 record) in the 1967 edition in Montevideo, Uruguay, owns an eight-game winning streak from the Asian WC qualifiers after dropping its first four assignments, including twice to the Philippines (7-5), to finish with an 8-4 mark.
During the winning streak, the Akatsuki Five were victorious by an average margin of 22.5 points a game, beating the Islamic Republic of Iran twice (70-56 and 97-89) and Australia (qualifying tournament-best 10-2 along with South Korea and New Zealand) once (79-78), thanks to the inspired performance of Denver, Colorado-born Nicholas Ryan Fazekas, a 7-foot, 240-pound forward-center who is the Japanese’s naturalized player, and Japanese-born star Riu Hachimura, the Washington Wizards’ first-round pick (No. 9 overall) in the 2019 NBA draft out of Gonzaga University (2016-19) who netted 25 points in the 14-point victory over Asian powerhouse Iran (8-4).
Fazekas, Hachimura and Memphis Grizzlies forward Yuta Watanabe, who played for the Memphis Grizzlies in the NBA and Memphis Hustle in the developmental NBA G-League on a two-way contract during the 2018-19 wars, are expected to spearhead Japan’s campaign in the FIBA World Cup along with some of the best players from the Japanese professional B. League such as Yudai Baba (age 23, 6-foot-6, G-F, Toyota Alvark) and Makoto Heijima (29, 6-foot-3 SG, Utsunomiya Brex), both of whom played in the NBA summer league last July for the Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Pelicans, respectively.
Head coach of the Japanese squad is 55-year-old Julio Lamas from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
The 31-year-old Fazekas wore the colors of the University of Nevada (2003-07, his No. 22 has been retired by the school) and was drafted by the Dallas Mavericks in the second round (No. 34 overall) of the 2007 NBA grab-bag. He played a combined 26 games with the Mavericks and Los Angeles Clippers in 2007-08.
Fazekas has played in the Japanese League since 2012-13 with Toshiba, where he won a pair of title rings, and the Kawasaki Brave Thunders in the B. League last season.
Watanabe was the first ever Japanese-born student athlete to secure an NCAA Division I men’s basketball scholarship – and the fourth Japanese-born NCAA Division I basketball player of all time – while toiling with the George Washington University Colonials from 2014-18.
The second player from Japan to see action in the NBA after 5-foot-8 point guard Yuta Tabuse (Phoenix Suns, 2004), the 6-foot-9, 205-pound Watanabe, who turns 23 in October, went undrafted in the American pro league in 2018 but nonetheless inked a two-year deal with the Memphis Grizzlies last summer, appearing in 15 games with the club in 2018-19 with averages of 2.6 points and 2.1 rebounds in 11.6 minutes an outing.
A 6-foot-8, 230-pound frontliner, the 21-year-old, Toyama Prefecture-born Hachimura spent four years (2016-19) with the Gonzaga Bulldogs. As a senior last campaign, he was a consensus first-team All-American, earned Player of the Year honors in the West Coast Conference and romped away with the Julius Erving award (named after the all-time NBA great) given by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame to the top small forward in men’s collegiate basketball.
Hachimura, the fifth Japanese-born NCAA Division I basketball player of all time, was the first athlete from his country to play in the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament in 2017 and turned in the same trick last March. He also is the first player from Japan to be selected in the first round of an NBA draft.
The 6-foot-9, 34-year-old Takeuchi twins, Kosuke and Joji, are still in Japan’s 16-man training pool but the roster will have to be pruned down to 12 in time for the FIBA World Cup.
Japan is bracketed with Turkey (September 1) and Czech Republic (September 3) and the two-time defending gold medalist United States (September 5) in Group E in first-round play and their games will be held in the Shanghai Oriental Sports Center in Shanghai.
Despite their size and athleticism, the Japanese will be hard-pressed to advance past the prelims as only the top two teams from each of the eight groups of four teams each will qualify for the second round. The third- and fourth-placers in each group will be relegated to the classification round.
Earlier this month, the Akatsuki Five played a pair of World Cup tuneup games against New Zealand back home, winning the first, 99-89 (behind Hachimura’s 35 points) and dropping the second, 104-87.