2012 Olympics: Men's Basketball Teams

As reigning world and Olympic champions, Team USA will enter the London Olympics as major favorites. And rightfully so; with LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant and other NBA superstars expected to participate, Mike Krzyzewski's club will be absolutely loaded.

But Coach K's club won't be the only team in London with NBA talent. In fact, most of the twelve teams participating in the men's basketball tournament will sport a few names very familiar to American basketball fans. Here's a look at the field.

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Undefeated Teams

Seven teams have won the NCAA tournament without a single defeat to mar their records. Their stories include some of the most storied names in basketball history: Bill Russell. Frank McGuire. Lew Alcindor, John Wooden, Bob Knight... these teams finished perfect seasons by taking home an NCAA championship. It is worth noting, though -- all of these teams turned the trick before the tournament field expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

1956: San Francisco

San Francisco's 1956 record of 29-0 was part of a 60-game winning streak that saw the Dons -- led by future hall of famers Bill Russell and K.C. Jones -- win the 1955 and 56 NCAA Tournaments.

1957: North Carolina

Tar Heel coach Frank McGuire took a novel approach to scheduling -- Carolina reached the Final Four having played just eight home games. They won the title game in triple-overtime, beating a Kansas squad led by Wilt Chamberlain.

1964: UCLA

The 1964 title was the first of John Wooden's record ten NCAA championships -- and the first of four seasons the "Wizard of Westwood" would finish with an unblemished record.

1967: UCLA

In 1967, Wooden -- with some help from center Lew Alcindor (later known as Kareem Abdul-Jabbar) began a run of seven straight NCAA titles with a 30-0 season.

1972: UCLA

Wooden lost Alcindor, but that didn't matter. The Bruins plugged sophomore Bill Walton (freshmen couldn't play varsity ball back in those days) in the middle and ran the table in 1972...

1973: UCLA

And 1973. The '72 and '73 seasons were just part of a record 88-game winning streak that wasn't broken until the Bruins lost at Notre Dame on January 19, 1974.

1976: Indiana

The '76 Hoosiers -- led by Kent Benson, Scott May and Quinn Buckner -- finished the season with a 32-0 record and Bob Knight's first of three championships. The 1976 Final Four actually featured two undefeated teams. The other was Rutgers -- the Scarlet Knights ran their record to 31-0 before losing to Michigan in the national semifinals.

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NBA Lockout: Are NBA Teams Really Losing Money?

Jul 5 2011

According to the NBA, 22 of 30 franchises are losing money. According to the NBPA, that assertion is... well, "baloney" would be a polite way of summarizing.

Who's right?

There's an increasingly-large pile of evidence to suggest that the league is guilty of... at the very least... creative accounting.

Exhibit A: Deadspin takes on the New Jersey Nets

Deadspin.com obtained three years' worth of financial data from the New Jersey Nets. It's not hard to imagine why such a team might be losing money; it can be difficult to generate fan interest when everyone knows you're moving. Still, Tommy Craggs' breakdown does a good job of showing how tax lawyers and aggressive accounting can take a slight profit and turn it into a substantial loss.

Exhibit B: Larry Coon Balances the Books

Writing for ESPN.com, noted NBA salary cap-ologist Larry Coon explains how expenses totally unrelated to the day-to-day operations of a team figure into profits and losses. For example:

$41.5 million of the Nets' $49 million operating loss in 2005, and $40.2 million of its $57.4 million in 2006, is there simply to make the books balance. It is part of the purchase price of the team, being expensed each year. This doesn't mean they cooked their books, or that they tried to pull a fast one on the players. It is part of the generally accepted accounting practice to transfer expenses from the acquisition to the profit and loss over a certain time period. However, it's an argument that doesn't hold water in a discussion with (Billy) Hunter and the players association, who would claim that the Nets didn't really "lose" a combined $106.4 million in those two years, but rather that they lost $7.5 million and $17.2 million, respectively.

Exhibit C: Nate Silver's Skepticism

Another respected number-cruncher, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight, also raised a skeptical eyebrow at the league's claims of financial woe. Using data from Forbes magazine and other financial publications, Silver estimates that the league as a whole is still profitable - but that high-revenue teams like the Lakers, Knicks and Bulls might be making enough to cover losses elsewhere.

Interestingly, Silver compares the NBA's current financial situation to that of Major League Baseball, just before the 1994 strike. According to Forbes, about one-third of the league was in the red in 1993, and half the league's profits came from just four teams. But instead of implementing a salary cap, baseball came out of that negotiation with an enhanced revenue-sharing structure that seems to be serving the league very well.

I suspect the players union - and quite a few of the owners - would sign up for a similar system right now.

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How Basketball Teams Qualify for the Olympics

Sep 14 2011

In July of 2012, twelve teams will head to London to compete for Olympic gold in men's basketball. Twelve others will be going for the gold in women's hoops. But in reality, the competition started years ago; simply qualifying to compete in the Olympics is an arduous process that plays out over the course of several years.

Host Country

Generally, the first berth in the Olympic basketball tournament is reserved for the host country. In 2012, that's Great Britain. But the British aren't exactly known as a hoops power. FIBA, basketball's international governing body, asked Great Britain to make substantial improvements in its basketball programs before agreeing to give them a host nation berth in the tournament.

London was awarded the games back in 2005, but was not officially given the berth until March of 2011.

Reigning FIBA World Champions

The reigning FIBA World Champion also gets an automatic slot in the Olympic games. Team USA has that honor for the 2012 games, thanks to Kevin Durant, Derrick Rose and the other NBA stars that won gold at the 2010 FIBA World Championships in Turkey.

FIBA Regional Championships

Seven more spots in the Olympic field are distributed based on the results of tournaments held in each of FIBA's five geographic divisions:

• Two from Europe
• Two from North and South America
• One from Africa
• One from Asia
• One from "Oceania" - essentially, Australia and New Zealand

Those berths go to the champions - in Europe and the Americas' case, the champions and runners-up - of tournaments held in each region.

The Olympic Qualifying Tournament

That leaves three unfilled slots. Those are filled by the top three finishers in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament, which matches up twelve of the lower-tier finishers from the FIBA regional tournaments.

The Olympic Qualifying Tournament includes the third through sixth-place finishers from Eurobasket, the third through fifth from the Americas, the second and third-place teams from Africa and Asia, and the Oceania tournament runner-up.

Criticisms of the Process

There are some pretty significant problems with the geographic divisions, due to the fact that most of the world's best basketball teams hail from Europe or the Americas. According to FIBA's 2010 rankings of men's national teams, eight of the world's top twelve squads - Spain, Greece, Lithuania, Turkey, Italy, Serbia, Russia and Germany - are European. Two more come from the Americas - the United States and Argentina - with Puerto Rico and Brazil just outside the top dozen at 15 and 16.

Australia and China are the only representatives from Oceania or Asia in the top twelve. Africa's top team, Angola, rated 13th.

Under the current format, two European squads qualify for the games based after Eurobasket, and four more get invites to the qualifying tournament. But that means the seventh-best European club doesn't even get a shot at the qualifiers.

But according to the FIBA rankings, the seventh-best team from Europe is the eleventh-best team in the world.

Meanwhile, Oceania is guaranteed a spot in the Olympics and another in the qualifying tournament, despite the fact that the entire region has only two teams of note. In 2011, the Oceania "Tournament" that determined an Olympic berth was actually a best-of-three series between Australia and New Zealand. New Zealand went 0-2 against their rivals, but will still get a chance to qualify for London ahead of a European club that ranks several spots higher on FIBA's list.

Improving the Process

Zach Lowe of Sports Illustrated published a number of suggestions to improve Olympic basketball qualifying and ensure that more of the world's top teams are seen on the biggest stage. First off, he recommends expanding the tournament field to sixteen teams, a change that FIBA has pushed for some time but Olympic organizers have rejected. He also recommends combining the Oceania and Asia regions for the purposes of Olympic qualifying.

Olympic Women's Basketball Qualifying

The qualifying process for the women's Olympic basketball tournament is very similar. Automatic berths are given to the host nation and reigning FIBA World Champion (Team USA). But only the champion of each regional FIBA tournament advances - one each from Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa and Oceania. That leaves five slots to be determined by the Olympic Qualifying Tournament for Women, which will take place in London prior to the official start of the games.

The qualifying tournament includes the second through fifth-place teams from Europe, the second through fourth from the Americas, the second and third-place teams from Asia and Africa, and the Oceania runner-up.

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