(Totally deserves its own thread) Who's in for some offseason Basketball with the three best players in the world? 27 Aug - 14 Sep 2025 Defending Champions: Spain Schedule and Standings/Bracket: https://www.fiba.basketball/en/events/fiba-eurobasket-2025/standings#GP
I don't think Spain are going to repeat personally. I'd say the top contenders have to be Serbia, Germany and France. Spain do have a solid roster but there's a lot of NBA talent on Serbia and Germany is all top Euroleague level players. France do look decent too but I think their NBA talent isn't really top players with no Wemby. Anybody can win on any day though, a couple of monster games from Alpi along the way and he could take home some kind of trophy I guess.
Think so too, this is Spain's weakest roster in decades. Serbia are the heavy favorites, it will probably take a masterclass from the likes of Doncic, Giannis or FIBA-Schröder to stop them.
I don't think Slovenia has any chance this year. Most of Luka's supporting cast is now retired or completely washed. And they don't even have their naturalized American players this year. Luka could play a game of his career and it still wouldn't be enough to beat Serbia. It's literally Luka and 1 (washed) Euroleague player in Prepelic. Others are either Eurocup players or worse. This is even worse than those Dirk's German teams. Germany has a chance for sure. Greece/France/Turkey are a bit borderline.
Yeah I'd say you've accurately rounded out the rest of the contenders from who've been previously mentioned. I'd be pretty shocked if one of those 5 teams didn't win, and it's either going to take heroic games for the Greece/Turkey stars or somebody on France is going to have to be the star that takes them over. Serbia really do look super stacked.
If we were to specifically look for some dark horses that could shock Europe, I'd say we could probably include Latvia. A lot will depend on whether their PG Zagars can play, he had some injury issues. But if their threes are falling, Latvia can be tough to beat for anyone. It's a longshot, but they would be that team. The rest of the decent-ish teams like Italy/Lithuania/Spain currently don't possess as high of a ceiling as Latvia on their good day.
More of an exercise to find a darkhorse team - I don't think Latvia has much of a chance either. But it would be a nice story. This is their golden generation and this is only the second time they managed to bring the whole squad (more or less) together.
In a single elimination match Luka is one of the players that I'd say can pull anything off... but yeah, chances are pretty slim (pun intended). Game on!
Luka with 23 points in 21 minutes, Slovenia down by 15 at the moment... It's going pretty much exactly how I thought it would. Lol.
... against Poland, and they are not even good. But I'd be shocked if Slovenia fell in the Group Stage, think they will finish 4th. Spain lost to Georgia earlier, the defending Champions might be in trouble as well.
I'd say Poland is above average, somewhere in that 10-14 range. They did beat Slovenia in EuroBasket 2022 quarter-final. And that version of Slovenia was a far superior team which was contending for the medals. Of course losing Sochan right before the event hurt Poland a lot, but naturalizing Loyd is a huge addition for them. But yeah, there's no way Belgium and Iceland will finish ahead of Slovenia. It's looking very likely that the eighth-final will be Greece vs Slovenia.
France looks good enough to be in the Quarter Finals........ Sarr and Risacher plus Yabusele, Coulibaly and Luwawu Cabarrot.
From that game I have a hard time seeing their potentiel as 1 and 2 picks in the draft. I’m more impressed by Coulibaly. And we’re still missing a go to guy to close out games.
