Since the first games aren't till August 25th, I wouldn't expect to see final rosters until a month prior, at the earliest.
I'm personally very excited for this tournament, I've watched them since watching Kevin Durant single-handedly destroy the entire world in 2010.
Some notes:
(1)
Qualifiers drama: Argentina, reigning FIBA silver medallists, 4th-ranked team in the world and participants in 9 straight FIBA World Cups, somehow didn't qualify. In the
Americas qualifiers, they dropped a game to Venezuela in the first round which carried over, and in the 2nd round they split with Canada and then lost to Dominican Republic
twice, eliminating them on tiebreakers with Venezuela in the group and then
another tiebreaker with Brazil for best 4th-placed team. The US's mostly
NCAA-and-G-League roster dropped
both their games to Brazil (and also lost to Mexico), which enabled the Brazilian team to climb back into contention themselves and ultimately make it. I'm very happy for Mexico though, too, since they didn't qualify last time around and are expected to send a mostly-domestic roster.
South Korea (#38) also tried to postpone some of their qualifiers due to players getting covid, and were instead kicked out.
The only African team in the world top 20, Nigeria at #19, failed to make it out of
African qualifiers. As did reigning African champ and 3-time defending qualifier Tunisia (#21), who dropped two 1st-round games to South Sudan (!) and ended up 6-6 and well off qualification pace. South Sudan somehow ultimately went 11-1 at the tournament and qualified. In fact, the top 3 African teams didn't qualify, instead sending Angola (#41), Ivory Coast (#42), Egypt (#55), South Sudan (#62) and Cape Verde (#64), who comprise 5 of the 6 lowest-ranked teams who qualified for the tournament (amid #43 Lebanon). Who knows what to expect from them, really. We know Nigeria had a legit NBA roster to send, but I have no idea who the rest of them can field.
(2)
Roster strength: As noted above, final rosters won't be in for a while, but it's worth observing some of the NBA-level talent that different countries can field. For example, most of the best African players would be on a Nigeria team who, as noted, couldn't get enough help to qualify. Who's left for rosters from teams
outside the top 20?
- Atlanta's
Bruno Fernando, for Angola (#41)
- Real Madrid's
Edy Tavares, for Cape Verde (#64), formerly of Atlanta and Cleveland
- The Lakers'
Mo Bamba, for Ivory Coast (#42), who has really fallen off the NBA map since having, like, rap songs made about him
- Boston's Al Horford, for Dominican Republic (#23). As much as we might freak out about it, he didn't play in 2014 or 2019 and might think it cool this time around, but I'd say it's unlikely he'll agree.
- Minnesota's Karl-Anthony Towns, for Dominican Republic (#23), seems much more likely to give it a roll for the DR. He, uh, didn't have as much wear-and-tear in the playoffs as Average Al did.
- Boston's Kristaps Porzingis, for Latvia (#29), who's played for them before. So has Dallas'
Davis Bertans for that matter.
- Utah's
Lauri Markkanen, for Finland (#24), should be expected as he's played for them at every opportunity
- Lakers'
Rui Hachimura, for Japan (#36), backed up by Brooklyn's
Yuta Watanabe (and UConn's Gavin Edwards!).
- Memphis's
Steven Adams, for New Zealand (#26). The Nets' GM Sean Marks is also a Kiwi and was the first New Zealander to play in the NBA, though I'm not sure at 47 he's going to suit up again. Same with Beirut-born 57yo Steve Kerr for Lebanon, while I'm at it.
- Orlando's
Goga Bitadze, for Georgia (#32), alongside San Antonio's
Sandro Mamukelashvili. Their team might lose to the
state of Georgia, but they have good depth for a less prominent national team, fielding a bunch of guys in Spain's Liga ACB. I'd expect both NBAers to play.
(and probably a bunch that I'm missing)
You can definitely analyze roster strength by looking at the
tiers of leagues that they play in, so once most of those rosters come in I'll do a little breakdown. But at least 10 teams or so can field legit rotations of NBA players, and you can stretch that to 15 or so if you include Liga ACB and EuroLeague teams. Some teams are more of a mystery because they're all-domestic, like Egypt, and so it's hard to assess how much mutual familiarity and playing time together can make up for any deficits in athleticism and skill.
(3)
Better Know a Host: The tournament is principally in the Philippines (hosts all QFs-and-up, with earlier round games also hosted by Japan and Indonesia). That's a country many basketball fans may not recall being hoops-mad... but it is. Those who've heard of it in connection to basketball likely recall that it's the site of that sweet mural-laden urban basketball court in a tenement in Manila, which
awed Lebron James when he played a Nike-backed game there in 2015. They repaint it sometimes, gloriously, with icons of basketball or events, including after when Kobe Bryant Munson'd himself. Check this out about it:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeZhpc8-zfQ
(4)
The Contenders: Worth listing out the Top 10 in the world and their various claims to be a favorite. Some of them have a very distinct play style when they play as a national team, which leads to things like Greece having
no ideas at all on how to use Giannis, but also some very beautiful play (particularly France, imo).
#1 Spain: Defending FIBA World Cup champions and frequent olympic medallists, Spain's roster has a lot of domestic players (which is no slight given their national league is #2 in the world). Many of them are ex-NBA as well, e.g. Real Madrid's Rudy Fernandez, amid some current ones like the Hernangomez brothers or Ricky Rubio. Joe Mazzulla would love them, as they're all about the outside shooting and play a very switch-y defense.
#2 USA: Needs no introduction. I'll just say we're lucky Paolo Banchero didn't choose to play for Italy. What else, uh, Tyrese Haliburton was born on Leap Day, meaning he's only 5 years old and shouldn't be age-eligible. I got nothin'. But it was damn fun rooting for Tatum, Brown, Smart and Kemba in 2019.
#3 Australia: The 2020 Olympic Bronze Medallists and 2019 FIBA 4th Place team, Australia also whomped USA's varsity roster (featuring 4 Celtics starters) in the warmups to those olympics 2 years ago. Their
preliminary roster features 9 current NBAers, plus a few recent ones like Thon Maker and Dellavedova (though not Aron Baynes, sorry
@benhogan ), and the non-NBAers will have jet-lag advantage since most of them play domestic or elsewhere in Asia.
#4 Argentina didn't qualify ahahahahaha
#5 France: The 2020 Olympic silver medallists and the team that knocked out the USA last World Cup can now feature Victor Wembanyama playing at the 4 (!) with an actually-motivated Rudy Gobert in the middle. That should terrify literally any team in the world, I don't care who you are. Then they'll roll out Evan Fournier, Frank Ntilikina, Nicolas Batum. Will Wemby play? He
wants to, but
the news today is, he won't. Joel Embiid is also eligible, but nobody should bet on him agreeing.
#6 Serbia: Eternally one of the best teams in the world (winning the world cup in 1998 and 2002, silver in 2014 and the 2016 olympics), they finished 5th in 2019, but now they feature one Nikola Jokic at center. Bogdan, Boban and longtime NBAer Bjelica round out their Killer Bs, along with OKC's massive 7'0 wing
Pokusevski, and the team has EuroLeague stars top to bottom. I root against the country in general due to them starting so many wars with their neighbors, but any team with Jokic will be fun to watch.
#7 Slovenia: If you've ever wondered what it would look like if Luka Doncic actually busted his ass for 48 minutes on both ends of the floor, tune in to Slovenia's games, because he will. The 2017 Euro champions (!) also have what's left of Goran Dragic, who was that tournament's MVP (with an 18yo Doncic getting plenty of run too). They are loaded with EuroLeaguers, even if their depth isn't great, but that's expected if you're a country of only 2.1M people. Makes them an easy team to root for.
#8 Lithuania: The other small-but-mighty euro team, this basketball-mad country has only 2.8M people, and yet these guys wrecked every team not named France in Euro Qualifiers. The land of Damantas Sabonis and Jonas Valanciunis has no shortage of EuroLeague stars (at Baskonia, Barcelona, and domestic superteam Zalgiris, among others), and their team likes to
run.
#9 Greece: Giannis-and-friends (and brothers) have a schizophrenic sort of roster, with some very big and physical EuroLeague stars (the country has a very deep history in Euro ball). If you like rooting for teams that are less than the sum of their parts and never quite seem to put it together - and what Boston fan doesn't? - then Greece might be your team. I'm sure their general antipathy to building their tactics around 2-time NBA MVP Giannis has
absolutely nothing to do with the fact that his teammates and coach are all white, which has never ever been a cultural challenge anywhere in southern Europe.
#10 Italy: Yes, Italy, somehow tenth in the world. Land of Kobe Bryant's youth and endless cultural memes, them having a licensed EuroLeague team (Olympia Milano) has led to some improved talent development and they finished 5th in the last Olympics. Their likely roster is all players who were born and raised in Italy, no Italian-Americans (or even
Reggie Jackson). Led by Utah's Simone Fontecchio and whatever remains of Danilo Gallinari's basketball career, their roster is actually a lot of Milano standouts like Stefano Tonut, Nicolo Melli and Giampaolo Ricci. They managed a split with Spain in the Euro qualifiers for this tournament, with their loss only coming in OT.
Can't wait.
