In his interview with fiba.basektball, the 29-year-old acknowledged that he won’t have too many chances to perform on the World Cup stage and won’t let this one slip by without a fight: “I love playing in these kinds of tournaments. And I want to fight to help my team make it to China 2019. I want to compete on the world stage once again in my career”, he started.
World Cup Rumors
On Giannis Antetokounmpo and whether he’ll join the Greek national team in the June-July window of the World Cup Qualifiers: Giorgos Vassilokopoulos:” We are in contact with the players and the NBA. Come to my office and check my mail with the Bucks. We talk with Giannis, Koufos, Dorsey, Papagiannis and I hope that they will all be present. Unless they load them with more obligations. Unless the NBA bosses decide differently.”
The 29-year-old was slated to join the USA Basketball men’s team in London in 2012, but a torn meniscus in his left knee forced him to withdraw. In 2014, as the United States was preparing for the FIBA World Cup tournament in Spain, hoping to secure an automatic bid to the 2016 Olympics, Griffin pulled out in July for what he told The Athletic was a lingering knee issue that needed to be addressed. “He was very much in the mix of making a couple of teams and injuries at the very last moment took him out,” USA Basketball director Jerry Colangelo said following the announcement.
The 40 participating teams (20 men’s and 20 women’s) were divided into 8 pools of 5 after the automatic seeding of the 5th edition of the FIBA 3×3 World Cup, which will be staged in the Philippines on June 8-12, 2018. The reigning champions will get busy early in the competition. Serbia’s men are in for a rematch of last year’s World Cup against the Netherlands while Russia’s women will meet 2-time winners USA. [….] The seeding is conducted automatically according to the FIBA 3×3 Federation Ranking of each national federation at the April 1, 2018 cut-off date.
While speaking to “Sportklub” his intention is clear. “Yes, yes, of course. I hope to play as well in the qualification games”, Teodosic replied when asked when he will play again for the national team. However, he is not a fan of the current FIBA World Cup qualification system: “In this qualification system basketball only loses because of the lesser quality. FIBA might have imagined that in those windows Bogdan Bogdanovic, Nemanja Bjelica and all the EuroLeague players will be present, but this is simply not possible because we have also our season. I hope we will come to a solution and stop things looking like this”.
