FIBA keeps SEABA up to speed
A three-man FIBA team from the Swiss head office recently conducted a briefing session in Kuala Lumpur to discuss the competition format for the 2019 World Cup and plans after next year’s Olympics in Rio de Janeiro with the view of creating awareness at the level of Southeast Asian countries.
FIBA national federations and sport head of Asia Magesh Mageshwaran of India coordinated the event that brought in FIBA director of events Predrag Bogosavljev of Serbia, FIBA sport and development senior assistant Florian Pasquet of France and FIBA 3x3 development manager Richard Rue Linger of Germany for the meeting with 10 delegates from Indonesia, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Singapore and the Philippines. SBP deputy executive director for international affairs Butch Antonio represented the Philippines during the two-day sessions.
“It was a 9 to 5 schedule and like going back to school,” said Antonio. “Every country had one delegate except Indonesia which sent in three. The Malaysian Basketball Association hosted the briefing. The FIBA team flew in from Geneva to keep the SEABA (Southeast Asian Basketball Association) countries posted on developments. FIBA asked the different federations what they need to strengthen their organizations and offered assistance in that respect. We talked about plans after Rio and the format for the 2019 World Cup. FIBA told us that 3x3 will be the next big thing in global basketball.”
Antonio said it was explained that the FIBA Asia Championships in Changsha, Hunan, China on Sept. 23-Oct. 3 will be the last zone qualifier for the Olympics. The succeeding continental tournaments will be stand-alone events to follow a four-year cycle from 2017 to 2021 to 2015 and onwards. Qualification for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics will be through the 2019 World Cup and Olympic qualifying tournaments in June 2020.
For this reason, the coming FIBA Asia Championships will be crucial as the last Olympic qualifier with only the winner to represent Asia in Rio de Janeiro. There are 16 slots for the FIBA Asia Championships and eight are now taken by China as the host nation, Iran as the 2014 FIBA Asia Cup winner, Kazakhstan as the Central Asia qualifier, Qatar and Kuwait as the Gulf qualifiers and the Philippones, Malaysia and Singapore as the SEABA qualifiers. To be filled up are three slots for West Asia, one for South Asia and four for East Asia. The West Asia qualifiers are ongoing in Amman, Jordan, with Lebanon, Iran, Palestine, Yemen and the host country participating. Since Iran has already qualified, the slots are expected to be claimed by Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. Jordan is coached by Serbian Rajko Toroman with Alex Legion its new naturalized player. India is picked to qualify for South Asia and South Korea, Japan, Chinese-Taipei and Hong Kong will likely represent East Asia.
Antonio said the qualifying schedule for the 2019 World Cup will start in November 2017. It will be a two-year qualification period with six windows available in November 2017, February, June, September and November in 2018 and February in 2019. Each team plays one home and one away game per window.
“At the FIBA World Cup in Spain last year, Asia was represented by the top three finishers of the previous FIBA Asia Championships, namely, Iran, the Philippines and South Korea in that order,” said Antonio. “For the 2019 World Cup, Asia will be consolidated with Oceania and seven slots will be allocated for the merger. Before, it was three slots for Asia and two for Oceania or a total of five so there is an addition of two slots for the merger. I think that means five slots for Asia because Australia and New Zealand are the only contenders from Oceania.”
Antonio said a draw will be held as to which countries will play off on a home-and-away basis. “FIBA still has no details of the draw or the groups,” he said. “I imagine the draw will assign countries into groups, maybe four to six in a group similar to the previous World Cup. But the big difference is in 2019, the World Cup will welcome 32 countries. In Spain, there were only 24. My thinking is the format will be a stepladder system. I’m almost sure there will be a carryover format. The series of eliminations will end up with the top seven finishers to qualify for the World Cup from Asia and Oceania.”
Antonio said FIBA is now conducting briefing sessions all over the world. “They’ve divided the geographics and they’re segmentizing the different federations so the briefings are managed efficiently,” he said. “We attended the briefing for SEABA so I’m sure there are also briefings for West Asia, the Gulf, South Asia, East Asia and Central Asia. FIBA Asia is coordinating this effort with FIBA head office in Geneva. Once the details are ironed out, there will be more briefings to get all the federations acquainted with the qualifying format for the World Cup.”