It's oh so complicated

SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - Recently I was talking to a friend from back home about the current landscape of international basketball in the Americas.

(Let me point out that I live in Puerto Rico, where basketball is the number one sport, and national team competitions occupy a very special place in the collective heart of the island. We are consumers of the game.)

"How does a team like Jamaica end up in the FIBA Americas Championship?", asked one of my friends. And I went through the normal mental reorganization that I go through when faced with such a question; took a deep breath and sincerely tried to put it in the simplest terms. It went something like this…

"Well, first I would have to explain to you the geographical division within our continent. We have our region, Americas, then we have three sub-regions, the North American, only made up of USA and Canada, the Central American and Caribbean, called CONCENCABA and made up of every country in the geographical division with the inclusion of Mexico, and the South American, called ABASU and made up of the 10 countries from 'Sudamerica'.

"But then, the Central American and Caribbean sub-region is divided into two sub-sub regions. Those are the Central American, called COCABA, that as I previously stated includes Mexico, and the Caribbean, called CBC, made up of every island in the sea.

"Those sub-sub-regions have competitions, the COCABA and CBC championship, with the COCABA qualifying 4 teams and the CBC 3 teams to the Centrobasket Championship."

"The Centrobasket I know," my friend told me. "But only seven teams? And how do you arrive at four from Central America and three from the Caribbean?"

"Well," I took another deep breath, "It is 10 teams in the Centrobasket because you also qualify the best three teams from its past edition. There are four teams qualified from Central America, because the Centrobasket was to be hosted by a Central American team, Mexico (which, I repeat, even though it's technically a North American country, we count it as a Central American one) and this gives the sub-sub-region the right to have that fourth team. If a Caribbean country hosted the tournament, then the CBC would qualify four teams from its competition, and the COCABA would in turn only qualify three." 

"Okay, so the Centrobasket…," said my friend.

"Yes, the Centrobasket, the sub-regional tournament from CONCENCABA, qualifies four teams to the FIBA Americas Championship. The other sub-regional tournament, the South American Championship, from ABASU, qualifies four more. And the USA and Canada qualify automatically out of the North American region," I added.

"But, the USA qualify automatically? Why haven't they played in a while?" he asked.

"Because they won the [FIBA Basketballl] World Cup," I answered. "And that gives them an automatic spot at the Olympic Games, so they don't have to qualify through the FIBA Americas Championship. They also won the last Olympic Games in London, so they also skipped the FIBA Americas the following year. The team hasn't played in a continental competition since 2007 in Las Vegas." 

"Okay, and the 10th team comes from the sub-region that is hosting the FIBA Americas," he concluded with uncertainty. 

"Yes. You got it. Mexico is hosting the 2015 FIBA Americas so the fifth-place team from the previous Centrobasket, in this case Panama, gets to fill the USA's spot," I concluded.

I could see in his face he was still puzzled, trying to put everything together. It's not his fault. This landscape is the true representation of complexity, which is my nice way of saying it is a mess… impossible to follow. 

The Americas has a rich basketball tradition. The game was created here, we have one of the - if not the - oldest basketball federation in Uruguay and for sure the oldest basketball championship in the world, el "Campeonato Sudamericano". This is wonderful, a history that should be celebrated. But we have let it become a crutch. Tradition has gotten in the way of the growth of the game. Common fans, which care only about events and competitions, have no way of successfully being involved in the qualification process of their national team.

At some point we had to simplify all of this, maybe following the European model, where they have EuroBasket qualifiers and not "Eastern European challengers", but we didn't. Instead of having a CBC, COCABA, Centrobasket and South American Championships, we could have had the "FIBA Americas Championship qualifiers". It didn't happen and now, in this short attention span society, we have lost complete engagement in the competitions. We have no clear narrative.

The new competition system in 2017 will fix this and my answer can be simpler…

"We have 16 Division A teams playing home and away games in a four-year span that ends up qualifying seven teams to the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup."

"Oh, and by the way, the USA have to play to qualify, and Mexico goes back to North America where they belong. There are no hosting privileges to this and that tournament. They just play, and the seven teams with the best records move on to world stage."

The mess is over and the road to the World Cup is a simple one that my friend can understand it clearly. Very clean, straightforward narrative. 

The kind of no nonsense approach that I love. 

William Rosario

FIBA

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