wow what a mess of a system, and awful timing for Australia we can't use our NBA or NBL players!

Are we sure the NBL isn't making allowances for this in the schedule?

The NBL will make exceptions I am sure but I doubt Europe or NBA would. We would have a mostly NBL squad I suspect which should bode well against Asian competition and thankfully the real tournament is in the NBA off season.

From what I can find on fiba.com, the new "Asia Cup" will be played 15 to 27 Aug. 2017. Previously, this tournament served as a qualification tournament, but that is no longer the case.

The timing might be ok for our NBA players. Any chance that we can get some of our Boomers A-team NBA players to play in this one? I'd be most interested bringing in Simmons, Maker and Exum to get used to the system. It might be their only opportunity to play for the Boomers before the 2019 World Cup.

I'm not confident they'll play because the tournament is really only for regional bragging rights, in arguably the 2nd weakest region, and we should win with an all-NBL team anyway. When speaking to NBAers, especially those new to the team, the Boomers coach needs to sell it as a "road to 2019-20", even though it is technically not. I'd be great to get Simmons in familiar with the Boomers system and ensure Maker follows through in putting on a Boomers singlet.

No I am pretty sure all of that is the World Cup qualification rounds. It is the FIBA 2021 Asia Cup which may or may not have ramifactions on World Cup or Olympics.

To me, it appears the Asia Cup is to be a standalone tournament, designed to be a prestigious 4-year cycle tournament. Same applies to Eurobasket.

A wiki source says: "The 2017 FIBA Asia Championship will mark firsts and lasts for the Asian Championship, this will be the first Asian Championship as a standalone tournament (meaning will not serve as qualifier either for the Basketball World Cup or the Olympic Games)."

FIBA's own explanation of the qualification system for the Asia region on YouTube omits mentioning the Asia Cup:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nlHjj0S9zIM



I'm not sure how FIBA chooses which teams go in division A and B of the Asia region. I am guessing that IF the Asia Cup acts as qualification tournament, it might only be to select the division A teams. Just to reiterate, this is only speculation because I have read nothing to support that. As far as I can tell, qualification into the World Cup depends only on results of the 6 home-away series played from Nov 2017 to Feb 2019.

Yes. Those Home and Away series are Asian qualifiers and the teams will all be Asian. Basically we'd have to fuck up pretty badly not to qualify but there is no way to know which time frame we will have to fill out of the many that they have.

I am just hoping there will be chances each year to get our A team together. The structure of this wont help us at all if the only time we can get our NBA guys is when it is a major tournament. It means theyll only be playing with eachother once every two years.

The qualification system is now like soccer, with home & away series determining who goes to the World Cup.

There will be breaks in pretty much all club seasons (bar the NBA) for the November and February qualifiers, as FIBA showed in recent months they will basically go to war with anyone who threatens not to.

It's highly unlikely there will be any notable changes to this system, it has been worked out over a long period of time, in cooperation with the NBA, but it’s good news for Australia as we realistically just have to make the top eight in Asia (as there are seven spots plus China as the host) to qualify for 2019.

Once at the WC, we then have to finish above New Zealand to take the Oceania qualification spot for the Olympics. If we don’t get that we go into one of four qualification tournaments.

The other good news is we will get to see the Boomers play in Australia in meaningful games in November, February, June/July and September (and hopefully away games on TV). We will probably have some NBA players for the June/July window and most for September.

But do we play all of those windows, Paul, or just some? Because it seemed like each team plays 2 sets of 3 games to qualify.

I am also getting slightly more interested in the Commonwealth games as a good opportunity to play potential 8-12 spots on the A team. I suspect Bairstow, Anderson, Goulding, Lisch, Martin, etc will all be available.

All teams play two games per window.

In Asia Div A teams are divided into four groups of four, playing home and away against the three other teams in their group. These will be played in November 2017, February 2018 and June/July 2018.

The top three from each group then move onto the second round of qualifying, where they will play home and away against the three qualifiers from another group.

These will be played out over the final three windows in September 2018, November 2018 and February 2019.

Out of all of those the only time we might have our NBA guys is the June/July 2018 spot. It kind of shits on any form of continuation with NBA guys leading into the World Cup. And I fear to ask when the world cup is because it's probably smack bang in the NBA season at this rate. I just think they're doing this to pressure teams away from using their NBA guys. Plus I have to say a 32 team World Cup is excessive. Outside of the top 20 the rest are going to be laughable.

World Cup is in middle of the year (NBA offseason).

We will be walk up starts to the World Cup - two game series against Sri Lanka, Palestine, Syria, UAE etc are just going to be ugly.

I am very surprised given the changes that an automatic qualification place has been retained for Oceania to the Olympics. But I guess the alternative was both that Aus and NZ would qualify through Asia to the exclusion of an (actual) Asian team.

Probably better to run your NBL guys for those anyway and win by 60 rather than 160. But I feel like there needs to be a yearly opportunity to play our NBA guys in a meaningful series. I am not sure if the new qualification provides that. If anything it will just serve to show the massive gulf between the good basketball nations and the woeful ones.

Our qualifying match-ups will be against the likes of China, Japan, Chinese Taipei, Philippines, Malaysia, Korea, NZ and Singapore, with the western Asian teams likely to be in their own groups, especially in the first round.

I think some NBA players will be available in June/July and most in September. So we will get four games with close to our full strength team, then practice games leading into the WC and Olympics.

I think you'll find it won’t be much different to what it has been, given with the exception of 2015 we have only had our best team together for majors.

"Plus I have to say a 32 team World Cup is excessive. Outside of the top 20 the rest are going to be laughable."

ME, run me through the 12 teams you think will make it that will be laughable and why.

Eurobasket 2015 was extremely competitive with 24 teams, and that's only European teams.

"ME, run me through the 12 teams you think will make it that will be laughable and why.
"

Basically everyone from Asia except Aus and NZ and half of Africa.

I was pleased that Oceania was going to be merged with Asia because we would be subject to tournament conditions, ultimately playing the best teams in the Asia-Pacific. But this new qualification system changes all that.

There are 16 teams in the A division. How many of those will be at least mildly competitive? New Zealand, China, perhaps Philippines.

Now consider that division A is divided in half, so whoever is on the other half of the division will never be played against. There could be a scenario where Australia is in one half of the division, with New Zealand and China in the other half. In that scenario, there would never be any contests between Australia and NZ or China. The most challenging opponent will come within Australia's half of the division.

There is no final, nor champion. That only happens in the Asia Cup. If we want games against quality opposition, the only opportunity will be deep in the Asia Cup tournament, presuming teams even select their best lineups in an otherwise inconsequential tournament.

On the other hand, Europe is so deep that European teams will consistently be playing quality opponents. There are probably more than 10 teams in Europe better than any team we might play against in Asia. Australia is still at a major competitive disadvantage in finding quality -- let alone, competitive -- opposition to play against.

This is the way I see it in Asian basketball:


Australia

- 100 light years of daylight -

New Zealand

-100 light years of daylight-

China
-
Philippines


Then everyone else.

This qualification scenario does nothing for Australian basketball. I mean, fine if we qualify through there, but I wouldn't bother with the FIBA Asia Cup. Might as well send in a SEABL team

Philippines recent results on the world stage:

Lost to France by 9
Lost to NZ by 9
Beat Senegal by 2
Lost to Puerto Rico by 4
Lost to Argentina by 4
Lost to Greece by 12
Lost to Croatia by 3

Anything who thinks going into Manila will be an easy game hasn't been following international basketball.

Playing China in China will also be tough, NZ in NZ very tough and Korea, Japan and Chinese Taipei could also present a test with some home cooking.

Given the groups are likely to be separated east-west, we could well get four of those teams in our six home-away match-ups.

It won't be as tough as Europe, of course, but it is better than the current set up for the Boomers.

"Basically everyone from Asia except Aus and NZ and half of Africa."

Even ignoring the fact the Philippines obviously aren't laughable, that would only leave seven or eight substandard teams as Africa and Asia only get 12 spots between them.

Let's say there's 24 competitive teams. By the WC comp format, only two teams from each group of four progress to the round of 16. That means on average one good team from each group would be knocked out after the opening three games.

Basically even quality teams will have to be on from the first game or they could find themselves playing off for positions 17-32 and possibly missing out on the Olympics.

Looks like we need to have two fully formed teams though, Australia A and B.