1930: Uruguay 1934: Italy 1938: Italy 1950: Uruguay And besides, those three first ones are not much of an indicator of anything, since quite a few European teams refused to go all the way to South America for the World Cup and then some South American teams refused to go to France in 1938 since the World Cup was supposed to go back to South America. But I agree that it promoted global competition. However, as some other posters before have pointed out, there already IS a "basketball world cup" organized by FIBA, and the winningest team is surprisingly NOT the USA (it's Yugoslavia/Serbia, for the record). All the article says is that the NBA wants in on the business, either by partnering with FIBA (as Stern proposes) or by creating a new tournament and keeping all the revenue (as Cuban proposes). The only difference, really, is that international basketball would probably move even closer to playing NBA rules. But this article is a non-story to me.
Smart move by both the NBA and FIBA. FIBA already changed the name from the "World Championship" to the "Basketball World Cup." www.fiba.com/pages/eng/fc/even/p/openNodeIDs/20521/selNodeID/20521/worldcup.html
i laugh at the suggestion the nba's best players won't turn up beyond london, do they think we've already forgotten why the best players turned up in 2008?
