Too Much Two Summers In a Row

Victor Wembanyama will be playing in the Spurs' Summer League games.  He will NOT being playing for France at the FIBA World Cup in August and September.  He originally planned on doing both, but decided to focus on his upcoming rookie season with San Antonio.  Wembanyama still hopes to play in the Paris Olympics next summer, where the hosts will be one of the medal favorites.  Which is actually another reason why he's passing on the World Cup.

A rookie, especially a rookie expected to become a star like Wembanyama, wanting to play in the NBA Summer League makes complete sense.  But, playing in the Summer League, then the World Cup, then an 82-game NBA regular season, then potentially the playoffs, then the Olympics, then right back into another 82-game regular season grind is a lot of basketball in two years.  So it also makes sense that he'd want a little break in the middle.  And the World Cup is really the one event you can drop.

That's really the biggest issue with FIBA's decision to move the Men's World Cup to the year before the Olympics.  Because it's a lot of basketball for everybody!  And the top players will end up having to make a difficult decision.  As much as they may want to play for their country, it might not be the best thing for their bodies.  So they have to make a choice.  Either play approximately 200 games (regular season, playoffs, international), if not more, over the course of two years, or leave the National Team without one of its best players.

Some countries can handle not having their top players.  Most can't.  And the choice those NBA guys make could very well determine the medal chances of their home countries at the World Cup.  Which is a double-edged sword.  Because the World Cup doubles as Olympic qualifying, so if they don't qualify this year, they have to play in a separate Olympic qualifying tournament next Spring.  Which is more international games to put on their bodies!

This is all because of a decision FIBA made after the 2014 edition of the World Cup.  They didn't want to continue holding their tournament in the same year as the FIFA World Cup, so as to both avoid confusion and raise the prestige of their event.  So they moved the next edition to 2019, putting the World Cup in the summer before the Olympics.  The two biggest international tournaments are in back-to-back years, with an NBA season in between.  And yet players are expected to do both.

I definitely criticize NBA teams for "load management" with their top players during the regular season.  But I do agree that three NBA seasons plus two major international tournaments without any sort of a break in between is too much.  That's why the USA usually has two completely different rosters at the World Cup and Olympics.  Which is a luxury not every country has.

The first time the World Cup and Olympics were scheduled back-to-back was 2019-20.  COVID, of course, changed that.  Instead, there was a very different challenge that summer, with the NBA Finals ending days before the Olympics started, and the Suns' Devin Booker getting literally no break.  He immediately flew from Phoenix to Tokyo and only arrived in Japan something like 36 hours before the USA's first game.  Then, as soon as he got back, the 2021-22 NBA season started.

Because the Tokyo Games were postponed, this will now officially be the first time the World Cup and Olympics are played in consecutive years.  And the NBA schedule has gotten back to normal, so there's at least a few weeks before and after the international tournament between seasons.  But still, that's asking a lot of the players.  Especially those top guys.

Throw in the fact that FIBA also changed the qualifying procedure for both the World Cup and Olympics.  World Cup qualifying in basketball is now essentially the same as World Cup qualifying in soccer, with international windows where teams play a double round robin against the other nations in their qualifying group.  Those international windows are in the middle of the NBA season, which means NBA players aren't available for those qualifiers.  Which doesn't matter for some countries, but makes a 
huge difference for others.

And those nations are a prime example of why FIBA's current schedule doesn't work.  Take France.  They beat the U.S. during the group stage in Tokyo and ended up winning the silver.  With Wembanyama, Joel Embiid and Rudy Gobert, they're one of the strongest teams in the world and would be among the favorites at the World Cup.  Without them, are they even a medal contender?

France at least knows they don't have to worry about qualifying for the Olympics.  Everybody else does.  The top two European countries at the World Cup will join them in Paris.  The others will have to go into Olympic qualifying.  So, there's obviously the incentive to get it done now, when Nikola Jokic will be playing for Serbia, Luka Doncic for Slovenia, etc.  Those guys should be available for the Olympic qualifying tournament, should it come to that, but that would mean more games for all of them to play in!

Throw in the fact that the Tokyo Olympics were postponed a year, and you've got three major international basketball tournaments in the four summers from 2021-24.  Then nothing for the next two years before going back-to-back again in 2027-28.  That's not very spread out, either.  It's a lot of exposure, followed by none for an extended period.  Which isn't ideal.  (Just look at women's soccer, which practically disappears on the international level in those two years following the Olympics and before the next Women's World Cup.)

While I understand their thought process, I think FIBA made the wrong move in pushing the World Cup back a year.  In addition to all the other reasons I've already mentioned, the concerns about the FIFA World Cup seem a bit unfounded.  Seriously, who's going to confuse basketball and soccer?!  Basketball is the second-most popular sport in the world, so I get their desire to give the FIBA World Cup more of a focus.  But, by rescheduling the World Cup, they're putting an undue burden on the players, who also have NBA seasons in between to think about.

So, when you consider all of that, Victor Wembanyama's decision not to play for France this summer is completely reasonable.  I'm sure it was a tough call, but it was the right one for him.  And it's one he wouldn't have had to make if FIBA's schedule was a little more accommodating.  You know, like it used to be.