Filed under: Euroleague, FIBA, USA Basketball, Interviews
NEW YORK -- For Team USA, the 2006 World Championships in Japan was a learning lesson, a wake-up call. For the rest of the world, the tournament simply meant one thing: "we've caught up!" That is the position taken by FIBA's secretary general, Patrick Baumann, who also insists that the 2009 Los Angeles Lakers are not the defending World Champions.
"You go into [NBA arenas] and see banners with 'World Champions 1998, 1997' ... that's the wrong perception. There's a world out there that has caught up [to the US] and the real World Champion is currently Spain," said Mr. Baumann.
I'm sure Pau Gasol could go either way on that argument.
The growth in popularity of the game of basketball has made the argument seem more authentic. Take the 2010 World Championships in Turkey, for example. The tournament has become so popular outside of the U.S. that with still three months to go before the opening tip-off there is not a single ticket available for any of the 80 games to be played. There are estimates that 350,000 people will attend the games, a number far greater than those who attended the games in Japan, which sold 75 percent of the tickets with 225,000 attendees.
Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments
Full story at http://nba.fanhouse.com/2010/06/01/fibas-secretary-general-spain-not-lakers-the-defending-world/
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment