Mexico was the best of the weirdest

BUENOS AIRES (Martin Seldes' Brave New World) - And so, the weirdest FIBA Americas Championship ended with the most unexpected champion in this century.

Nothing against Mexico. Actually, Gustavo Ayon and Co. were absolutely amazing. But before we talk about the winner, this tournament will be remembered more by the upsets and failures than by the winning teams.

Let's not be unfair.

Mexico were patient. Led by Sergio Valdeolmillos, the team ended up playing much better than how they started. And don't forget Mexico didn't even qualify to the tournament until Panama were disqualified by FIBA.

Mexico won the tournament, but Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and Argentina also won their tournaments. At least partially.

If we had to talk one by one, Puerto Rico was the team with more responsibilities as it was the only one that had almost the same team than two years ago.

The change that the team experienced was coming from the bench. Paco Olmos was able to make Puerto Rico defend more and shoot less. But only sometimes. After they beat Argentina and almost clinched their spot for the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, they went back to the old Puerto Rico and lost more than they won. Anyway, the team was good enough as to make it to the Final and lose it just by two points.

Argentina is experiencing a wind of change. Even if some of those players that have made it to the top of the world are still playing, coach Julio Lamas was forced to make some young players become leaders. Or at least better players than before.

The Dominican Republic found themselves with a qualification that just few were expecting. After so many tournaments trying to play as Americans, they started playing as Dominicans with Orlando Antigua coaching the team instead of famous and marvelous coaches from the NCAA or the NBA.

As we have said so many times, FIBA basketball is harder (or at least different) than any other American competition.

Behind the four teams, Venezuela and Canada were about to buy their plane tickets for Spain.

The FIBA Americas Championship hosts were close. Really close. An incredible coach, role players that were ready to give everything to have a chance to succeed and a noisy crowd were the best weapons for a limited team in terms of talent.

Canada will now have a new challenge. How to keep this group together. Steve Nash and Jay Triano will have to work a lot to avoid these NBA players leaving the national team, especially if they are not invited to the World Cup by FIBA.

If they stick together, most of them could play and who knows how far they can make it in 2016 at the Rio Olympics and even at the 2019 World Cup.

The other two teams qualified to the second round were Uruguay and Jamaica. The South Americans made it to the tournament knowing that a good starting five was not enough to qualify to an international event. They did good.

How can we talk about Jamaica without saying that Samardo Samuels left the team in the middle of the tournament? Yes, just like that. Their best player decided that going back to who knows where (believe me, I don't want to know) was better for his career than playing the last games for his national team. The rest of the team also did good and beat big teams such as Argentina and Brazil.

And talking about Brazil, our last column was only about them, so there's nothing else to say about the biggest failure of the tournament from here.

Ayon was named the tournament's MVP after having 20 points and 16 rebounds in the final. But not only that. He defended when he had to (like in the Semi-Finals against Scola), he scored when he had to and he led the team when he had to.

Of course basketball is far from being an individual sport.

Carlos Arroyo and JJ Barea had a good tournament, but the best player for Puerto Rico was Renaldo Balkman. Unexcpectedly, the United States-born forward/center understood that 'D' was the beginning of something big. Points, rebounds and his ability to run the court as if he was a guard were his strengths.

As we announced and as everyone was expecting, Luis Scola was the top scorer. The funny thing is that he played far from his best level.

The weirdest FIBA Americas finished, but we can still that international basketball will always be the best to see. So we celebrate that in only a few years we will have it during the whole year.

Martin Seldes

FIBA

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