The flagship event of the Fédération Internationale de Basketball (FIBA) or simply the International Basketball Federation, the FIBA Basketball World Cup is a quadrennial event that sees 32 men's national teams fight it out for the gold medal in a round robin and knockout format. The 2019 edition of the FIBA World Cup is taking place from 31st August to 15th September in China. Team USA are the defending champions having won the tournament back in 2014.
As mentioned earlier, the FIBA World Cup is a quadrennial event. Yet, the last edition of the same took place in 2014 and upcoming FIBA World Cup is taking place in 2019. This makes it a gap of 5 years. This was done to ensure that the FIBA World Cup does not coincide with the FIFA World Cup, as was the case for every edition of the tournament from 1970 to 2014.
As mentioned early, China will be hosting the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019. This will be the first time that the tournament will be taking place in the Asian country and a total of 8 cities will be hosting the games. They are namely Beijing, Shanghai, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Foshan, and Guangzhou.
While several NBA superstars have opted out of playing in the FIBA World Cup, there are still several NBA players that we will get to see in FIBA's flagship tournament.
The likes of Kemba Walker and Donovan Mitchell will be playing for Team USA Basketball. The Greek Freak Giannis Antetokounmpo will be playing for Greece while reigning Defensive Player of the Year Rudy Gobert will be lining up for France.
A total of 32 teams will be playing in FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019. All the teams will be divided into 8 groups of 4 teams each where they will play each other once. The top two teams from each group will qualify for Round 2 where the remaining 16 teams will be split into 4 groups of 4 teams each where they will again face each other once.
The remaining 8 teams will then move on to the quarter-finals and the knockout format will ensue from there until the winner is ultimately decided in the final. A third-place game will also be played between the two semi-finals losers.
