2023 FIBA World Cup: 5 non-USA teams that could win the tournament

The 2023 FIBA World Cup is almost here, and the field of teams who could potentially win the gold medal is larger than ever.

FIBA has long struggled to make the World Cup a marquee basketball tournament comparable to its soccer counterpart. The Olympics remains the top prize in international basketball, and most of the world’s best basketball talent saves their summer energy for that instead.

This summer’s FIBA World Cup is taking a similar mold. Not only is the United States down to a squad that contains zero All-NBA players from the previous season, but other countries are also missing All-NBA talent.

Greece is without Giannis Antetokounmpo, Serbia is missing Nikola Jokic, Lithuania is missing Domantas Sabonis, and Australia is missing Ben Simmons. (Okay, the last one was kind of a joke, but Simmons has made an All-NBA team and is not participating for the Boomers.)

The lack of talent helps level the playing field overall and could make this summer’s tournament arguably the most exciting of the century. There are potentially nine teams – including the United States – good enough to win the gold medal.

For brevity’s sake, we are going to stick to five here. Team USA will be skipped, as will defending champs Spain and perpetual runner-up France, because they are both like the Miami Heat of these international tournaments; they are simply always going to be good and thus a little boring to talk about.

Australia was skipped as well. Again, apologies to any Aussie readers, I promise the teasing stops here and that we are personally very excited to watch Josh Giddey and Dante Exum attempt to lead this team to gold.

Now, let’s get started.