Rare are players like Dirk Nowitzki who regularly played for Germany even though he was a star in NBA and great player. European players in general tend to care a lot about national team in every sport.
Best example of that is Nikos Galis,scoring machine and best Greek basketball player of all time and one of the greatest European players of all time. He refused to come back to NBA and play for then best team, Boston Celtics, and play with Bird, Parish, McHale, Walton etc and win few NBA titles just because that would mean he wouldn't be able to play for Greek national team, due stupid Fiba rules. And that meant so much to him.
Something like this is unimaginable nowadays,i hope Giannis will follow his steps.
Looking forward to Serbia vs Greece match tonight. Cold mastixa is ready, just need some gyros
Best example of that is Nikos Galis,scoring machine and best Greek basketball player of all time and one of the greatest European players of all time. He refused to come back to NBA and play for then best team, Boston Celtics, and play with Bird, Parish, McHale, Walton etc and win few NBA titles just because that would mean he wouldn't be able to play for Greek national team, due stupid Fiba rules. And that meant so much to him.
Something like this is unimaginable nowadays,i hope Giannis will follow his steps.
Looking forward to Serbia vs Greece match tonight. Cold mastixa is ready, just need some gyros
US players can afford to concentrate on NBA rather than the world cup, because the Americans can easily win their matches even without the star players. They are currently on a record 77-match winning streak and no other team has come even close to beating them during the past few months. Their recent victory against Spain was just another proof of their dominance.
The other teams don't have this luxury. They depend on a few players. For example, Greece depends heavily on Giannis Antetokounmpo. Even teams such as Nigeria are dependent on the NBA players, including Al-Farouq Aminu, Chimezie Metu and Josh Okogie. And try to imagine a Spanish team without Marc Gasol and Juancho Hernangomez. Other examples are Nikola Jokic of Serbia, Cedi Osman/Ersan Ilyasova of Turkey, Tomas Satoransky of CzR, Rui Hachimura of Japan, Cristiano Felicio of Brazil and Nikola Vucevic of Montenegro.
I can agree on that, Americans have by far the longest bench, and that could really make the difference when for other nations 2nd teams are on the floor, that is opportunity i see for Americans to win this. But we also saw that players like Jokic can play crazy minutes, like he did in last NBA playoffs.
But considering in previous years i would be 100% certain that Americans are getting gold and winning every game with 20-30 pts difference, this time i am not so sure, i think that Serbia is legitimate contender for world title, if they stay healthy and they don't loose anyone else beside Teodosic.
And who knows, maybe even Greece can upset Americans again, none thought that was possible the last time
With so many canceled players for USA from start of preparation I could agree with you that Americans have little less chances to win this time. Many team can be here counted beside Serbia, think that Spain is also good pretender for title. Also this is WC in basketball and many nations have improve in last 5 years and many can do good with American team even win them. I see this as football WC where all team are becoming equal in strength. How with this said I give only 50% to USA team, rest for Serbia and Spain, and even Germany who played well in qualification and always good Lithuania. All starts 31st this month and I hope we will see good matches.