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THE BEST OF FIBA WORLD CUP 2023: A TRADITION UPHELD

by Bert A. Ramirez / September 18, 2023

Photo from FIBA.com

Basketball’s premier test, the FIBA World Cup, has been decided, but a look at its best individual performers is worth taking for dyed-in-the-wool roundball aficionados. After all, this is the same event where the country, no matter how early in the sport’s history it was, and its greatest player ever, Carlos Loyzaga, first gained recognition. Remember 1954? That’s almost 70 years ago now but it was when the Philippines, led by King Caloy, achieved a podium finish in basketball’s World Cup (still called World Championship then), a feat that, to this day, no country in Asia has matched.

And Loyzaga, The Great Difference to fans and historians alike, was then among the five best players in the world, having been named to the event’s All-Tournament Team.

Fast forward to 2023, and for the first time in its history, the FIBA has come up not only with its traditional All-Star Five but also an All-Second Team to honor this year’s best individual performers. People now know, of course, that Dennis Schroder, by virtue of his having led Germany to its first-ever world championship, won the tournament’s Most Valuable Player award, following Ricky Rubio of 2019 champion Spain who didn’t make it to this year’s competition, in winning the honors.

Schroder leads four other players on the tournament’s All-Star Five, which also includes Bogdan Bogdanovic of losing finalist Serbia, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander of bronze-medal winner Canada, Anthony Edwards of fourth-placer USA, and Luka Doncic of seventh-placer Slovenia.

Photo from FIBA.com

Making it to the inaugural All-Second Team, meanwhile, are Arturs Zagars of surprise fifth-placer Latvia, Simone Fontecchio of No. 8 Italy, Jonas Valanciunas of sixth-placed Lithuania, Nikola Milutinov of Serbia, and Franz Wagner of the champion Germans.

If one would be more discerning, he would notice that all members of both teams, with the exception of All-NBA First Teamers Gilgeous-Alexander and Doncic, belong to just the second tier of players in the NBA. For that matter, Schroder and Rubio, the last two MVPs in the FIBA World Cup, are not even NBA All-Stars, and three of the players on the World Cup All-Stars – Zagars, Fontecchio and Milutinov – are not even in the NBA – yet.

But this doesn’t mean the quality of players in the FIBA World Cup is not at par with that of the acknowledged top pro league in the world. If anything, the latest denouement of the world competition just proves two things – efficient teamwork and commitment to a system will always be an advantage in basketball wherever it is played, and, second, if one is to go with the concept of winning with the best individual players, it better be with an overpowering cast similar to the original Dream Team where the US won by an average of 45 points, the biggest average winning margin in Olympic history next only to the Bill Russell-led 1956 US team’s 53.5-point winning edge.

One, however, has to qualify that that one and only Dream Team was not only made up of great individual players – despite the fact that one, Larry Bird, was already hobbled and was in his last tournament, it turned out, before retiring – but also of players whose instincts for team play were unmatched and whose passing skills seemed to have been with them since birth. Try Magic Johnson, Bird, John Stockton, Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, who averaged no less than five assists in their careers, both in the regular season and the playoffs.

Of course, it doesn’t mean that this year’s FIBA World Cup standouts should be dismissed. They deserve recognition as much as their more heralded predecessors in world competitions, whether it be the World Cup or the Olympics, and should thus be extolled.

Schroder, for one, proved that perseverance pays off in the end. Having tied a dubious tournament record for most missed shots in a game when he shot just 4-of-26 from the floor in Germany’s 81-79 quarterfinal victory over Latvia, the 6-foot-1 point guard that has played for seven NBA teams delivered when it counted most. He helped his team beat the US 113-111 in that fateful semifinal matchup with 17 points and a game-best nine assists, and then followed it up by scoring a game-high 28 points in the finals against Serbia, including a deft driving layup that iced the contest and the championship with 21.4 seconds left.

Schroder averaged 19.1 points, 6.1 assists, 2.0 rebounds and 1.4 steals for the tournament as he deservedly won the MVP trophy.

Bogdanovic, meanwhile, was the most consistent player on the Serbia side, topping his team in scoring with 19.1 points while also norming 4.6 rebounds, 3.3 assists and 2.1 steals, sixth in the tournament. He led the Serbians to their decisive 95-86 triumph over Canada with 23 points in the semifinals and had 17 points and a game-high five assists in the final.

Gilgeous-Alexander, who until he hit a rough patch against Serbia in the semifinals, battled for the tournament’s scoring championship, was one of the FIBA Worlds’ top all-around players, averaging 24.5 points, 6.4 boards, 6.4 feeds and 1.6 steals. Gilgeous-Alexander asserted himself in that third-place game against his NBA counterparts on the US squad, putting up a big double-double with 31 points and 12 assists as he combined with Dillon Brooks to give the Canadians that historic first-ever podium finish.

Edwards, who assumed the role of primary scorer for the Americans with the absence of such guys as Kevin Durant and Jayson Tatum, led the US with 18.9 points while also averaging 4.6 rebounds, 2.8 assists and 1.1 steals. He had a personal high of 35 points in a meaningless 110-104 loss to Lithuania in the second round.

Doncic was the tournament’s top scorer with an average of 27.0 points per game as he became the only player to score 200 points in this year’s games with 216. This is besides averaging 7.1 caroms and 6.1 assists and finishing third in the games in steals with 2.5 per contest. The Dallas Mavericks’ franchise star had 29 points, 10 rebounds, eight handoffs and three steals as the Slovenians salvaged seventh place with an 89-85 victory over Italy.

The All-Second Team, on the other hand, may not be that star-studded but it’s made up of players who were no less impactful in determining their team’s fortunes.

Zagars, for example, must have made a lot of heads turn by leading Latvia to a surprising fifth-place finish despite missing top player Kristaps Porzingis. Zagars, a 6-foot-3 guard, averaged 12.4 scores and a team-leading 7.4 assists, orchestrating the Latvians’ team-oriented style that saw five of them average double figures in scoring and, most importantly, coming up big in the clutches. In Latvia’s surprising 98-63 blowout of Lithuania for fifth place, for example, the 23-year-old Zagars set a World Cup record with 17 assists without a single turnover. But Zagars’ coming-out party came during that heartbreaking 81-79 quarterfinal loss to Germany, during which he was red-hot with 24 points on 9-of-17 floor shooting while passing for eight assists, both game highs.

Fontecchio, meanwhile, normed 18.0 points and 5.6 rebounds as he continued to be one of Italy’s premier players. In that 78-76 comeback win over Serbia, for example, which dealt the Serbians their only loss in the tournament before the finals and clinched for Italy a quarterfinal slot, the 6-7 Fontecchio had a game-best 30 points, seven caroms and three assists, hitting what turned out to be the marginal basket with 33 seconds left.

Valanciunas led Lithuania in both scoring and rebounding, finishing with norms of 14.8 points and 8.8 rebounds, which ranked sixth in the tournament, while also averaging 1.3 blocks. The 6-foot-11 center, now with the New Orleans Pelicans, became only the second player after Jose Ortiz of Puerto Rico to have recorded multiple double-doubles in three World Cup tournaments since 1994.

Milutinov, meanwhile, was the second-best player on the Serbian team as he averaged 12.1 points and a team-best 8.4 boards. The seven-foot center, who plays for the Greek League squad Olympiacos, provided Serbia its primary option inside in these games with his 66.1 percent shooting from the field.

Wagner, who injured his ankle right in Germany’s first game against Japan and subsequently missed the next four games, earned his slot for having been instrumental in the Germans’ historic championship triumph. He averaged 16.8 points, a team-best 6.8 rebounds and 3.0 assists in the four games he played for the Germans, and it may be safe to say that his team wouldn’t have finished on top had he not recovered. The 6-foot-10 forward, a two-year veteran with the Orlando Magic, played a crucial role in Germany’s 81-79 quarterfinal victory against Latvia, taking over when Schroder struggled with just nine points as he led his team with 16 points and eight caroms. He also scored 22 in his team’s semifinal triumph over the US and, finally, capped his memorable campaign with 19 points in the championship match.

For the first time in the World Cup, the tournament has also come up with awards for the Best Defensive Player and Best Coach, and winning these seminal honors are Dillon Brooks of Canada and Latvia headman Luca Banchi.

Brooks, the feisty former Memphis swingman in the NBA now with Houston, was the primary defensive force for Canada, helping the Canadians to a crucial 100-89 victory over Doncic and Slovenia in the quarters with his physical one-on-one defense and holding down the US’ potent wing scorers in their 127-118 overtime victory over the Americans to clinch a historic bronze medal even while burning the hoops in this one with a tournament-high 39 points, including 7-of-8 from three-point range.

Banchi, of course, might have done the most with the least by leading an undermanned but gallant Latvian squad to fifth place in its first-ever World Cup. With Banchi orchestrating the Latvians, the latter showcased a beautiful brand of team basketball that saw them average 24.4 assists throughout the tournament, the most among the eight quarterfinalists and third among all teams, as they bucked the absence of Porzingis while overcoming a lot of other talented, more loaded teams.

This year’s FIBA World Cup might not have seen the best players right now with the missing NBA superstars from the game’s cradle, the US, along with what arguably may be the best big men in the world today, Nikola Jokic of reigning NBA champion Denver, who could have made a huge difference in Serbia’s campaign, and Giannis Antetokounmpo of Milwaukee, who could have provided Greece an irresistible force on the floor, as well as such other stars as Jokic’s Nuggets teammate Jamal Murray of Canada, Domantas Sabonis of Lithuania, Al Horford of the Dominican Republic and this year’s top NBA draft pick Victor Wembanyama of France.

But, as Schroder, Gilgeous-Alexander and Doncic have shown, the game wouldn’t be short of talent and elite brand of basketball as long as its practitioners will continue to move on with unbridled passion for the sport regardless of the circumstances and the continuum. Loyzaga and company, among the game’s pioneers, had paved the way for today’s generation of players with what then was the best brand of basketball, and the best performers in this year’s World Cup have certainly upheld that tradition.

#fiba2023 #dennis schröder #luka doncic

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