Group D preview: Sombor Shuffle taking center stage in Prague
PRAGUE (Czech Republic) - The back-to-back NBA Regular Season MVP is in town, and it's the biggest show in all of Czech Republic right now. Nikola Jokic and Serbia are clear favorites of Group D.
PRAGUE (Czech Republic) - The back-to-back NBA Regular Season MVP is in town, and it's the biggest show in all of Czech Republic right now. Nikola Jokic and Serbia are clear favorites of Group D at the FIBA EuroBasket 2022.
However, Serbia won't settle for winning the group, they want to win the whole thing in Berlin, too. To get there, they will face a solid test by the hosts, despite Tomas Satoransky 's injury woes, and Jokic will face another European NBA star in Lauri Markkanen and his teammates from Finland.
Poland will try to bounce back from FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Qualifiers' disappointment, while the Netherlands hope the stars could align for them to advance to the next phase. Israel could be a dark horse at this event, Deni Avdija and Yam Madar are the young one-two punch reunited once more after their U20 days.
Group D teams in the FIBA World Ranking Presented by NIKE:
| World rank |
Country | Zone rank |
IOC | Current points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6. | Serbia | 4. | SRB | 664.8 |
| 12. | Czech Republic | 9. | CZE | 577.3 |
| 13. | Poland | 10. | POL | 560.6 |
| 35. | Finland | 17. | FIN | 314.7 |
| 42. | Israel | 20. | ISR | 262.2 |
| 47. | Netherlands | 25. | NED | 230.9 |
Team to beat: Serbia
Runners up last time around, runners up at the 2016 Rio Olympics, runners up at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2014, Serbia are keen to take that final step in 2022. They want to bring back that winning feeling of leaving the tournament with a triumph on the last game day.
It's not just Jokic that other teams have to focus on. Vasilije Micic, back-to-back EuroLeague winner and back-to-back Final Four MVP, will be leading the charge in the backcourt, and the rest of the team is just perfectly balanced with high level team-first players.
Back to lead all of them from the bench is the man who is running out of real estate for all his trophies. Svetislav Pesic, who just turned 73, he won his first major international gold medal back in 1985,. It was so long ago that you can find players born later than that, who are already retired.
The best part is that he already knows how to lift a trophy in Germany. He won FIBA EuroBasket 1993 with the host nation, in one of the biggest upsets in history. Now, 29 years later, it would be an upset to see Serbia off the podium.
Player to watch: Nikola Jokic
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Most of basketball fans have this memory of a tired Nikola Jokic in a Serbian jersey back in 2019, never being able to dominate the FIBA Basketball World Cup in China the way everybody envisioned it with him, Bogdan Bogdanovic, Nikola Milutinov and others.
But a lifetime has passed since. Jokic is now a certified superstar, one of only 13 men in basketball history to win the NBA MVP award in consecutive seasons, and his 2022 national team version looks simply unstoppable.
He is the MVP, he just signed the biggest NBA contract ever, and climbing on the top step of the podium at FIBA EuroBasket 2022 would seem like a fitting way to close out the summer.
Group D team profiles
Netherlands: Meet the team that defeated both Turkey and Croatia in the FIBA EuroBasket 2022 Qualifiers.
Czech Republic: Special tournament for the hosts, despite a last second injury blow to superstar Tomas Satoransky.
Serbia: It used to be the Land of Basketball, now it's the Land of MVPs.
The games in Prague tip off on Friday, September 2. Full schedule is available here.