Spain scarily good

PARIS (The Monday International Show) - There will only be two tickets for London up for grabs at this summer's EuroBasket in Lithuania and one of them seems almost pre-stamped for a scary good Spanish squad.

Of course favorites don't always pan out but in Spain's case, there are so many factors in their favor, you just have to bow down to their excellence.

Let's take a look at those factors in the light of their three easy wins against France, Lithuania and Bulgaria to start off their preparation for the upcoming Eurobasket with a bang!

By the way, in those three wins coach Sergio Scariolo played the piano with his roster, limiting the playing time of his biggest stars who were still quite efficient.

He can afford to bring them along slowly in order to reach peak form during the elimination round. For example, Juanca Navarro scored 19 points in 12 minutes in the latest win v Bulgaria on five of seven shooting from three-point land.

Wow! This golden generation of Spanish players has come of age together around the Gasol brothers, Navarro, Rudy Fernandez and Calderon to name a few, and Scariolo had so much talent on hand he left the excellent Barcelona center Fran Vasquez at home.

I know a few national team selections where he would have been the best inside player!

Since this generation has played and won together for so many years, their team chemistry is off the charts and they circulate the ball and hit the open man with their eyes closed! These guys don't take many forced or bad shots and that is the sign of a champion. It's like they have an internal honor code for the group and bad shot selection is just not acceptable.

Okay, you might feel I paint too rosy a picture because in the recent past, sometimes Juanca and Rudy would be competing to be the top dog offensive threat from the wing, but this is only natural in such an elite hyper-competitive setting. Everyone will keep their ego in check for the greater good as they usually do because of the dominance and leadership of Pau Gasol, the ultimate go-to player in European basketball.

Now that his brother Marc is as good as he is, Spain has a double-whammy inside presence and you can make that a triple with the arrival of Serge Ibaka to bring athleticism and shot blocking to the already powerful mix. Not since the golden generation of Yugoslavia(Divac,Radja,Kukoc) have we seen such an impressive trio of in the paint superstars.

Spain has all the answers for upcoming defences in Lithuania and a seductive, fan pleasing, spectacular style to boot!. They can play really fast thanks to their quickness and steals on defence or slow the game down and pound the ball inside while surrounding the Gasols (excellent passers) with dead-eye three point shooters.

About the only tactic left for opponents is to leave Ricky Rubio open and zone up around the big men with alot of help from Rubio's defender.

That's when Scariolo can go to Calderon, a much better shooter and so on and so forth. This team has no weakness, ah, except maybe one... or two...

They must avoid getting overconfident or complacent and they must avoid arrogance and constant complaining with the referees which we have regretted in the past.

Of course, an upset is always possible but frankly, after lining up all these factors in Spain's favor, I have a hard time believing they won't get a direct ticket to the London Olympic games in September!

George Eddy