By REYNALD MAGALLON
Gilas Pilipinas finally gets to know its opponents in the group stage of the 2023 FIBA World Cup when the official draw ceremony is held at the Smart Araneta Coliseum on Saturday, April 29, with everybody – basketball officials in particular – praying that lady luck will smile on them.
That’s because the outcome of the draw is likely to be used in large part in the national team’s preparations apart from being its barometer whether it would go far or not.
While no team is a pushover in the tournament, it’s only natural for the national team to still hope for a favorable grouping in the preliminaries and get higher chances of advancing to the next round.
For the draw, the 32 teams were distributed in the eight pots, A to H, with Gilas, by virtue of being the host, joining Spain, USA and Australia in the Pot A. Since no teams from the same pot will be drawn to the same grouping, such arrangement would allow Gilas to avoid an early collision with the top three teams in the FIBA world cup rankings.
Pots 1, 3, 5, and 7 will fill in the groups A, C, E and G while Pots 2, 4, 6, and 8 will be drawn to complete groups B, D, F and H. To ensure geographical distribution, no region shall have more than one team in each group except Europe which has 12 participating nations.
With all the aforementioned rules in the draw, Gilas cannot face any Asian team in the group stage and could only be joined by either one country each from Europe, Africa and America or two countries from Europe and one from either Africa or America – all of which only coming from the Pots 3, 5, and 7,
Gilas, which was preselected to be drawn in Group A, is now left with European teams Greece, Italy, Germany, and Finland; American teams Brazil and Dominican Republic and African teams Ivory Coast and Angola as the teams it could possibly face in the group stage.
The most favorable scenario for Gilas is to be drawn with Finland (23rd), Dominican Republic (24th) and Ivory Coast which would allow the Nationals to play teams outside the Top 20 of the FIBA rankings.
