2010 FIBA World Championship

• 1. Introduction

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  The 2010 FIBA World Championship was the 16th edition of the men's basketball world championship. Twenty-four national teams competed in Turkey from the 28th of August to the 12th of September. It was the first time Turkey had hosted the event, and the first time the championship had come to Europe since Greece in 1998. FIBA, the Turkish Basketball Federation, and a dedicated organising committee shared responsibility for running the tournament. The competition carried a prestige the sport placed on equal footing with the Olympic Basketball Tournament. How Turkey came to hold that distinction begins with a vote cast by FIBA's governing body, six years before the tournament opened.

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• 2. Winning the Right to Host

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  On the 5th of December 2004, FIBA's Central Board met in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to hear final presentations from three bidders. France competed against Turkey and a joint submission from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Serbia and Montenegro, and Slovenia. Australia and New Zealand, Italy, Russia, and Puerto Rico had each announced intentions to bid but withdrew before the vote. France led after the first round of counting. The joint Balkan bid fell in that same round, and Turkey carried the deciding vote to claim the hosting rights.

  By December 2009, Turkey's hosting was confirmed and the United States held an automatic berth in the field. The Americans qualified by winning the 2008 Olympic men's basketball tournament. FIBA set about filling the remaining spots through continental qualifying competitions. Three African nations, three Asian nations, two from Oceania, four from the Americas, and six European teams earned places through those competitions. Four wild card berths remained. FIBA required each candidate to submit a 500,000 euro registration fee, and fourteen teams applied. Those fourteen were narrowed to eight semifinalists: Cameroon, Germany, Great Britain, Korea, Lebanon, Lithuania, Nigeria, and Russia. On the 12th of December 2009, FIBA announced that Germany, Lebanon, Lithuania, and Russia had earned the four wild card places. Three days later, the draw took place at the Ciragan Palace Kempinski Hotel in Istanbul. The teams were placed into four preliminary round groups of six.

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• 3. Five Arenas, Four Cities

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  Kayseri's Kadir Has Arena, completed in 2008, was purpose-built for the championship. Ankara Arena, finished in 2010, was also constructed for the event. Three other venues underwent renovations for the tournament. Those were the Abdi Ipekci Arena in Istanbul, the Halkapinar Sport Hall in Izmir, and the Sinan Erdem Dome, also in Istanbul. The group stage spread across these four cities, each preliminary round group housed in a single arena.

  For the knockout phase, all games moved to the Sinan Erdem Dome. The Dome seated 16,500 in its standard configuration, with the capacity to expand to 22,500. Among the group stage arenas, the Abdi Ipekci Arena held the most seats at 12,500. The Ankara Arena seated 11,000, the Halkapinar Sport Hall 10,000, and the Kadir Has Arena 7,500.

  Bascat served as the tournament's official mascot, a character drawn from Turkish cultural life. Modeled on the Turkish Van cat, Bascat was depicted as a white feline with one blue eye and one green eye. The character was known for being energetic and sometimes acting like a dog.

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• 4. The Acropolis Incident

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  Greece and Serbia met at the Acropolis Tournament in mid-August, a warm-up event staged roughly two weeks before the World Championship began. With 2:40 remaining in the game, Greece's Antonis Fotsis threatened Serbia's Milos Teodosic after Teodosic committed a foul. A brawl erupted and spread off the court and into the locker room tunnel. Officials terminated the game at that point, the score standing at 74-73 in Greece's favor.

  Serbia's center Nenad Krstic was arrested and held overnight for throwing a chair. The suspensions that followed forced both teams into the World Championship shorthanded. Krstic received a three-game ban. Teodosic, along with Greece's Fotsis and Sofoklis Schortsanitis, was suspended for the first two games.

  Greek coach Jonas Kazlauskas and Serbian coach Dusan Ivkovic both criticized FIBA publicly. The suspensions were announced less than 48 hours before the tournament opened, more than a week after the fight itself. Both coaching staffs argued that playing shorthanded from the opening was an unfair result of FIBA's delay in announcing the penalties.

  Greece won their first two World Championship games despite the absences. Serbia took two of their first three. Krstic, once his three-game ban had ended, went on to record 45 rebounds across six tournament games.

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• 5. Stars and Contenders

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  Forty-one players from the National Basketball Association competed at the 2010 FIBA World Championship, more than from any other professional league. Angola and the United States were the only two teams whose rosters were made up entirely of players from their domestic leagues. Slovenia, by contrast, fielded a squad composed entirely of players based outside their domestic competition.

  Argentina's Luis Scola led all scorers with 244 points across nine games, an average of 27.1 per contest. Pablo Prigioni, also from Argentina, led the tournament in assists, recording 58 across nine games at 6.4 per contest. Defending champions Spain stumbled early, losing two of their first three group stage games before recovering to finish second in Group D. Argentina went 4-1 in the opening round, their only loss coming against Serbia, who entered the tournament ranked fifth in the world. Nine of the ten European teams advanced from the group stage. Germany was the only European nation eliminated in the opening round.

  The United States went 5-0 in the group stage and never lost a game throughout the tournament. A final record of 9-0 brought the Americans a victory over host Turkey in the championship game and their fourth FIBA World Championship title. The team averaged 92.8 points per game on offense, the highest figure in the field. On defense, they allowed just 65.9 per game, the lowest mark of any competing nation. Their highest single-game output was 121 points, posted on the 6th of September.

  Kevin Durant was named the tournament's Most Valuable Player. He scored 38 points in a single game on the 11th of September, the highest individual total of any single game in the tournament. Durant finished with 205 points across nine games, averaging 22.8 per contest. The All-Tournament Team drew from five different countries. Named to it were Argentina's Scola, Lithuania's Linas Kleiza, Durant from the United States, Turkey's Hedo Turkoglu, and Serbia's Milos Teodosic.

  What happened inside those arenas was watched by more people than had ever followed a FIBA World Championship.

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• 6. A Billion Viewers

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  FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann confirmed that the television ratings for the 2010 championship exceeded those of the 2006 FIBA World Championship. They also surpassed the numbers posted by FIBA EuroBasket 2009. An expected audience close to 1 billion people followed the tournament across 200 countries. Thirty million people visited the official website. The event was broadcast in 183 countries, setting a new record and surpassing the 132 countries that had carried the 2006 championship. India and the United Kingdom broadcast a FIBA World Championship for the first time. Canada covered the event for the first time since hosting the 1994 FIBA World Championship.

  A preliminary round game between China and Greece drew an audience of around 65 million viewers in China. The championship final attracted fewer than 900,000 viewers on the American cable network ESPN. That figure was below the average audience for the 2009-10 NBA season on the same network. It was, however, double the audience for the opening game of the 2010 WNBA Finals. That game aired on ESPN's sister terrestrial network ABC in the same time slot.

  At the time of the championship, Canada had no professional basketball league. A minor professional league for the country was scheduled to begin play in 2011.

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