Home court advantage: American teams playing in the Americas

BUENOS AIRES (Martín Seldes' Brave New World) - The FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament will be on for the second time. The first one, played in Athens in 2008, was absolutely dominated by European teams, as Greece, Croatia and Germany were the only teams to earn a Beijing spot.

The same championship in 2012 will consist of 12 teams that will again fight for the three places in London. Yes, the last train will be departing from Venezuela during the first days of July and our American teams will do their best to try to avenge what they suffered four years ago.

It won’t be easy at all for the hosts, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic. Nine teams from the other four continents will come to the Poliedro de Caracas (Polyhedron Arena) to try to earn at least one of the spots: Angola, Nigeria, Jordan, Korea, New Zealand, Russia, Macedonia, Lithuania and Greece.

It will be the first time Venezuela will host an international event apart from three South American Championships (1991, 1997 and 2006). The first time they did it so, Venezuela celebrated their only title in Men’s Basketball. Not a bad precedent at all.

In order to analyse the chances of our teams to make it to London, let’s see how the American nations placed historically playing in our own continent:

It all started in 1950, when Argentina won their only World Championship title playing in Buenos Aires. The second, third and fourth places were also for American teams. From that tournament on, things became harder every year.

In 1954, Brazil celebrated in front of their Rio de Janeiro fans, as they beat the USA in the final and in 1959 Brazil won it again in Chile, followed by the USA and the host team. Brazil and the USA were expected to place in the top three but Chile (yes, Chile playing good basketball) took profit from being the homecourt to enter the podium.

That would be a constant theme in almost every important tournament played in any American country as the host would improve their usual results.

That’s how Uruguay collected a respectable seventh place in Montevideo 1967 or how Mexico placed fifth in the Federal District 1968 Olympic Games.

Hosts Puerto Rico failed to advance to the Semi-Finals in 1974 but four American teams ended within the top eight. None of them made it to the final game.

Canada achieved their best result since Berlin 1936 in the 1976 Montreal Olympics and they only repeated in Los Angeles 1984, a tournament won by the USA.

Two years before, Colombia hosted the World Championship and surprised everyone as they finished in the seventh place as one of the four American teams to be part of the tournament’s top eight.

As we got closer in time, American domination playing in our continent started to vanish. Argentina and Canada finished eighth and seventh in the World Championships they organized in 1990 and 1994, respectively. It was in the South American country where Puerto Rico ended in the fourth place, their best position ever.

It was the Dream Team the responsible of winning the only tournament played on home soil in the 1996 Atlanta Games. In 2002, they lost for the first time after 58 consecutive victories as Yugoslavia celebrated in Indianapolis.

The Dominican Republic will play only their second worldwide tournament after the 1978 World Championship in Manila.

It’s true it only happened three times in International tournaments. In two World Championships (Argentina 1950 and Chile 1959) and in the 1936 Olympic Games, three American teams filled the podium. Should Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic repeat the achievement, America would have six contestants in London. Dream, it doesn’t cost a thing…

Martín Seldes

FIBA

FIBA’s columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

FIBA takes no responsibility and gives no guarantees, warranties or representations, implied or otherwise, for the content or accuracy of the content and opinion expressed in the above article.