A Changing of the Guards For Iranian Basketball

Late breaking news: Iran finalizes its Olympic Qualifying Tournament team. And guess what? Their lineup is missing some big names that are practically synonymous to Iranian basketball.

Names like Hamed Afagh, Mehdi Kamrani, and even Samad Nikkhah Bahrami, a transcendent do-it-all forward who averaged 17.0pts and 6 rebounds for the Zheijiang Golden Bulls of the Chinese Basketball League.

How Bad Was The Gilas OQT Draw?

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.

POT LUCK: Getting Lucky In The Olympic Qualifying Draw

By this time, everyone knows who the 18 countries vying for three Olympic slots are. (in case you don't know, they are France, Serbia, Italy, Canada, Czech Republic, Greece, Angola, Iran, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Croatia,  Tunisia, Turkey, Japan, Latvia, Mexico, Senegal and the Philippines)

But this time, everyone would also know that we will be hosting one of the Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, a distinct honor and a tremendous advantage accorded to our basketball team.

With the draw looming in a few hours, let’s take a quick look at which teams would give us the better chance of winning the Manila leg.

Caveat: the Gilas lineup I’m using for this comparison includes not just a fit Andray Blatche, but also a fully healed Junemar Fajardo plus Jordan Clarkson.

But first, a look at the draw pots:

And now, analyzing the probable match ups:

POT 1 – Serbia is a host so we’ll never face them. It comes down to France vs Greece and while I would dearly love to see how Jayson Castro matches up against  Tony Parker, how Terence Romeo will react to seeing Rudy Gobert in his path, how Ranidel de Ocampo will fare against Nicolas Batum, playing Greece is a much better option for us. Greece is a good team but they haven’t been as successful in the world stage as they were a decade ago. I’d say we lose big against the French but win by about 5-8 points versus Greece.