Repeating As World Champions Will Be No Easy Task For USA Men
Basketball World Cup, is the diamond of FIBA events, and in 2014 the USA men’s team will be looking to successfully defend the crown it won in 2010.
I Capturing consecutive titles is no
easy chore. Only two countries have earned back-to-back FIBA world titles since the event was initiated in 1950, and although the United States has won the world crown four times, it has not won consecutive titles. However, having claimed the championship in Turkey in 2010, 2014 presents an opportunity for the U.S. to repeat for the first time.
Only Brazil, who
won consecutive world titles in 1959 and 1963, and Yugoslavia, who won in 1998 and 2002, have recorded back- to-back world championships.
The U.S. won its
n international basketball the FIBA World Championship, now known as the FIBA
basketball season in the U.S. Unable to use U.S. collegians or AAU team members, the U.S. sent an Air Force select squad which fell to gold medalist Brazil 81-67 and earned the silver medal.
The USA’s next title didn’t come
again until 1986, 32 years after winning its first title. Relying on relative unknowns from the college ranks, USA head coach Lute Olson and his 12-man team were widely considered a dark horse to win the title. But the U.S. behind the play of future stars David Robinson, Charles Smith, Kenny Smith and Tyrone Bogues, captured the USA's
proved too much for the U.S. collegians and won 99-91.
Continuing the dominance displayed
in Barcelona by the 1992 U.S. Olympic Team, USA Basketball's 1994 World Championship Team, led by Shaquille O’Neal who was named MVP, dominat- ed its opponents by an average of 37.7 points a game and rolled to an 8-0 overall record and the gold medal. Under the direction of Golden State Warriors head mentor Don Nelson, the USA squad for the first time ever at a World Championship featured NBA players.
With NBA labor problems prevent- 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup Facts
SITE OF COMPETITION: Spain Preliminary Sites: Bilbao, Granada, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, and Seville, Spain Eighth-Finals, Quarterfinals and Semifinals Sites: Barcelona and Madrid, Spain Gold Medal and Bronze Medal Games Site: Madrid, Spain
COMPETITION DATES: August 30-September 14, 2014 EVENT WEB SITE:
www.fiba.com/spain2014
first world title in 1954. Because of the timing of the second World Championship, the United States was represented in 1954 by the Peoria Caterpillars. The Caterpillars were a talented and experi- enced group which had not only won the 1954 AAU national title, but had also claimed top AAU honors in 1953 and 1952. After earning a silver four years earlier at the inaugural 1950 World Championship in Argentina, the U.S. cruised through the 1954 competition with a perfect 9-0 slate to earn its first World title. The USA won by an average of more than 25 points a game.
The next World Championship was
originally scheduled to be held in the fall of 1958, but delays in constructing the arena in Santiago, Chile, forced the championship to be delayed to January 1959 and to be played outdoors. The new dates were in the middle of the regular
30
EVENT OVERVIEW: The FIBA Basketball World Cup, known from 1950 until 2010 as the FIBA World Championship, is the flagship event of the International Basketball Federation (FIBA).
ing the use of NBA players as was done in 1994, USA Basketball’s 1998 World Championship Team was comprised by players who had played professionally overseas, in the CBA, or in college. Under the direction of Rudy Tomjanovich, the USA surprised many en route to a 7-2 record and the bronze medal.
QUALIFIED NATIONS: Featuring 24 teams, in addition to the host country Spain, and the United States, which qualified by winning the 2012 Olympics, also qualified for the ‘14 World Cup through zone qualifying championships were Angola, Argentina, Australia, Croatia, Dominican Republic, Egypt, France, Iran, Lithuania, Mexico, New Zealand, Philippines, Puerto Rico, Senegal, Serbia, Slovenia, South Korea and Ukraine. The final four spots will be selected by FIBA as wildcards for 2014 World Cup.
first World Championship title since the 1954 American squad did so. Meeting a powerful USSR team in the gold medal contest, a Kenny Smith layup over Russia’s 7'2” star Arvidas Sabonis with 15 seconds left pushed the USA's lead to 87-83 and to its eventual 87-85 win. The 1990 USA team came up short
in its quest to defend the World Championship gold medal that the USA had earned in 1986. Fielding a young and internationally inexperienced USA team that averaged just 20-years old, the Americans finished 6-2 overall and won the bronze medal. Facing Yugoslavia in the semis, the favored Yugoslavian team, which featured five future NBA players,
The 2010 USA
Team, without a single member of the 2008 Olympic gold medal team back in uniform, was a young team that rolled over opponents to compile
a 9-0 record and win the World Championship title.
Meeting host and undefeated Turkey
for the gold, in front of a sold-out, vocal partisan crowd, Durant’s 28 points propelled the Americans to a dominating 81-64 victory over Turkey and the USA’s first World Championship gold medal finish since 1994.
Durant, who set a USA World
Championship scoring record with 205 points in nine games for a record 22.8 points a game, while adding 6.1 rpg., and shooting 55.6 percent from the field, 45.6 percent from 3-point and 91.2 percent from the foul line, was named the MVP of the championship.
USA Basketball News
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