Bad enough.
Our group in the Manila Olympic Qualifying
Tournament include what is probably the strongest team in the entire qualifiers
(France) and in the other group, arguably the second or third strongest team
(Canada). New Zealand, Senegal, and Turkey complete our group and of the three,
it’s only Senegal that I’d say we’d be the favored to win.
The short tournament format makes every
game a must-win: lose one and you’ve got one foot out the door. So starting the
tournament off by going up against the prohibitive favorites, France, certainly
puts us in a bad situation almost immediately. If the likes of Tony Parker,
Nicolas Batum, Rudy Gobert, Joakim Noah, Boris Diaw, Evan Fournier, Ian Mahinmi
and Nando de Colo show the deadly form they showed at the 2014 FIBA World Cup,
they should be heads and shoulders above everyone else.
