FIBA World Basketball Championship

I know Americans don't care about it as much as the rest of the world does, especially Turkey since we are the host country, World Basketball Championship is still a big deal. Team USA not winning since 1994 and now competing with a B-Team, NBA superstars like Pau Gasol, Nowitzki, Tony Parker and Ginobili sitting out make the competition less attractive and popular, but there is still a really high quality basketball playing in the tournament to say the least. We saw some incredible second round games so far, a surprising and unlucky Greece-Spain matchup in the second round caused my favorites Greece to get eliminated early in the campaign.

Team USA is looking great, having won all six games so far in double digits. Turkey is also looking amazing, destroying France in the second round. A Turkey-USA final would be really fun and exciting to watch, and I think we can make it that far too. We play so well, we work hard, hustle and play good basketball. My only concern is our coach Bogdan Tanjevic and his lack of any understanding of rotation in a basketball team. I'm afraid Ersan Ilyasova and Hedo Turkoglu are going to wear out further into the tournament because of this. And now we have a really hard path to the finals, Slovenia and Spain who are I'm afraid to say it but better basketball teams then we are. But with our home court advantage and the momentum we have now, we are the favorites for both matchups.

Although it hasn't been a flashy tournament with the lack of stars playing in it, it still has been really exciting, especially for us Turks and I hope it ends well too.