The Prize
Now that noted astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has announced God’s non-existence in our universe through mathematics, maybe he can start working on explaining the FIBA tie-breaking procedure.
No, no, don’t start on BiE; it’s as easy as dialing up Wikipedia to find the steps in determining seeding for tournament play: Placement is determined based on, in order, game results between tied teams; scoring average between games of the tied teams; scoring average for all games of tied teams; drawing of lots.
Nice and neat it may be, but empirically this definition falls short. Seriously somebody should explain to BiE how/why France ends up in the fourth seed in Group D (and with the unfortunate fate of drawing home Turkey in round one) when they clearly whupped Spain’s butts early? How/why does Team China, a team that’s seemingly won one game in all of 2010, advance over Puerto Rico who not only beat China in the preliminaries but also outscored and surrendered fewer points than either of the other two squads involved in the tiebreaker?
Ah, whatever. Here’s the way BallinEurope might have seeded the tournament, based firstly on record and thereafter on momentum – after five games, at least we’ve got that objective criteria.
1. USA, 5-0. Is there any doubt that Kevin Durant will, at some point in his career, be called The Best Player in the World? That outrageous amounts of big guys aren’t necessarily life-or-death in an international tournament? That Kevin Love, thanks to his hard work and exposure, will be the most popular Minnesota Timberwolf next season? That we should finally stop calling these guys “The B-deem Team”? Answers: No, maybe a little yet, absolutely not, and yes please.
Whither Spain? In yet another example of “that’s why they play ‘em on paper,” the mighty Spaniards went down thanks to a French attack led by Nicolas Batum (14 points on 4-of-9 shooting, two rebounds, two blocks and 
When is a game-winning shot not a game-winning shot? When you’re playing in a FIBA tournament! Just ask Nando de Colo.
While much of international basketball fandom is anticipating the 2010 World Championship and the powerful teams’ backers dream of glory, one national team is fighting for its very survival against what some feel is an unfair burden placed upon them by FIBA and the IOC: Great Britain.
While nearly everybody (perhaps too many, in BiE’s opinion) await the final shape of Team USA’s roster going into the 2010 FIBA World Championship, a bunch of other teams spent the weekend making statements. Said statements could take the shape of confirmation of awesomeness (Spain), reminders of “hey, we still exist” (Brazil), and red-alert level warnings (Greece).
1. (↔) Spain. A jog through Cote d’Ivoire last week followed by 
2. (↑) Greece. Damn right, BiE went there. From their assemblage earlier this summer, Team Hellas has toyed with non-contenders like Cyprus and Russia (!) while defeating a top-10 tier team like Croatia with little excess effort. After this weekend, who thinks the Greeks are too old? Who thinks Theo Papaloukas will be missed to distraction? Who thinks this team isn’t a championship threat? No one sane, that’s who.
August is here and it’s full speed ahead for the 2010 FIBA World Championship in Turkey later this month. In coming weeks, we’ll be seeing the national teams competing in the tournament playing warmup games all over the planet – indeed, some have already begun play.
Cross yet another internationally-known name off the list for participation in the 2010 FIBA World Championship: Dirk Nowitzki today announced in a good news/bad news kind of way that he would not be playing for Team Germany in this summer’s tournament but that he will be suiting up for next year’s 2011 Eurobasket competition.
