Saturday, August 30, 2014

Basketball's World Cup

Today marked the beginning of the World Cup.  If you're confused and saying to yourself, "I thought Germany already won the World Cup," you'd be right.  Today marked the start of the Basketball World Cup.  It's the artist formerly known as the World Championships, but renamed the "World Cup" for this edition in Spain.

Basketball is the world's second-most popular sport, trailing only soccer.  As such, FIBA wants their marquee event to be as big as FIFA's World Cup.  Right now it's not.  Hence the name change, which, to be honest, only adds to the confusion because it doesn't distinguish the two at all. 

One of the reasons why soccer's World Cup is bigger than basketball's, FIBA concluded, is because they're both held in the same year.  So they decided to make a change.  Instead of four years from now, the next one will be in 2019.  With the field expanded from 24 teams to 32, matching the size of the soccer tournament.  To be honest, I'm not a fan of the new cycle.

The World Cup being held in the even year between Olympics is the perfect cycle.  It means that one of the two biggest events in the sport is held every other year.  By moving the World Cup to the year before the Olympics, it means that there will now be a major event two years in a row, then nothing for three years.  And for the players who'll be playing in those events, asking them to give up back-to-back summers for an international tournament isn't particularly fair.

USA Basketball has enough trouble getting players to take part in the World Cup (and it's probably going to get even worse after Paul George's injury).  But at least this way they can, theoretically, play in the Olympics, take a summer off, play in the World Cup, take the next summer off, then repeat the cycle.  By moving the World Cup to the summer before the Olympics, though, you're now theoretically asking players to play an entire 82-game NBA season, roughly 20-25 playoff games, then a whole training camp and tournament for their national team, then doing it all again after just a couple weeks off.  That's almost 200 games virtually non-stop in a two-year period!  I won't be able to blame guys for wanting to take a pass on the World Cup, especially since the Olympic gold medal is the one everybody really wants.

This new schedule creates all other kinds of problems, too.  The most obvious of which is Olympic qualifying.  The current schedule with the two major events staggered works perfectly for qualifying, as well.  Qualifying takes place in the odd-numbered summer preceding the championship.  But by moving the World Cup to the year before the Olympics, that throws off the qualifying cycle.  Now you're looking at Olympic qualifying and the World Cup in the same summer (that's one long summer) or possibly having qualifying for the two events running concurrently.  At least both of those are better than having Olympic qualifying take place only a few weeks before the Olympics themselves.

Or, the fourth option, which is the worst of them all, doing it soccer style where qualifying is staggered throughout the year.  Except in this situation, a majority of the teams attempting to qualify won't be doing so with their best players, who'll be in the midst of their NBA seasons.  How is that in the game's best interest?  Likewise, how is it fair that some nations won't be able to use their best players (NBA guys) while other, lesser nations will?  The chances of producing an upset in qualifying would be much greater, which is exactly the opposite of what you want happening.

My solution would've involved a schedule change, but not in the same way FIBA did it.  The tournament's held way too late in the summer.  That's the problem.  It's the end of August.  Americans are preoccupied with baseball's pennant races heating up and the start of the college football and NFL seasons, while all of the major European soccer leagues just started their seasons, as well.  People simply don't care enough about this tournament at this time of the year.

That's why the soccer World Cup is so popular, even in countries (like the U.S.) that don't particularly care about soccer.  But in the middle of the summer, with nothing else going on, FIFA's got a captive audience.  And it shows.  People get so into this thing, it's crazy.  The few games a day everyday for a month thing certainly helps, too.

But for the basketball World Cup, that passion isn't there.  And I think the time of the year when the tournament is held is one of the reasons why.  If it were held a little earlier in the summer, that could make all the difference.  The World Cup wouldn't get swallowed up by all these other events in other sports going on at the same time.  You'd also probably get less backlash from the NBA and NBPA.  Because these guys would get more than just a couple weeks off between the end of Worlds and the start of the season.

So what's my proposal?  Keep it in the non-Olympic even years, but move the dates up a couple weeks.  I'd suggest late July-early August.  That gives enough of a break between the end of the NBA Finals, the World Cup and the start of the next NBA season.  You might get more NBA players that are willing to play (and owners that are willing to let them) that way.  Because playing for your country is supposed to be an honor that too many of these players consider more of a burden.  And I think this new schedule is only going to make matters worse in that regard.

As for this year's event, we've got a U.S. B-team, but the U.S. B-team is still better than pretty much all of the A-teams in this tournament.  It'll depend on how the draw shakes out who I see posing the biggest challenge, but you've gotta think Spain's going to figure into this.  They're the second-best team in the world and they're playing at home.  If anyone is going to prevent the U.S. from taking the gold, Spain's a safe bet.  I don't see it happening, though.

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