The men's basketball World Cup round of 32 has been released, although the Chinese team has successfully qualified for the World Cup. However, for the men's basketball team, reaching the World Cup is just a set goal, and their real task this year is to grab a ticket to next year's Olympic Games at the World Cup. This time, the Chinese team will compete with the five major Asian teams for the only Olympic ticket. Among them, Lebanon is a major rival of the men's basketball team, and now, they have naturalized a big super killer, which is indeed a big disadvantage for the men's basketball team.
As we all know, although the Chinese team is the superpower of Asia, it was once untouchable in the Asian basketball world. However, in recent years, with the aging of Yi Jianlian and others, the dominance of the Chinese team in Asia has disappeared. Although it is still the top team in Asia, it cannot achieve absolute dominance. Teams like Japan, the Philippines and Lebanon are on their heads.
In last year's Asian Cup, the Chinese team lost to Lebanon in the quarterfinals, suffered the worst defeat, and the men's basketball team finally failed to reach the final four of the Asian Cup, and finally ranked eighth in Asia. As a rival, Lebanon also reached the World Cup this year, and, in order to achieve better results in the World Cup, they also naturalized Omari Spelman and let him represent the team in the World Cup.
Spelman, 26, was a 2018 NCAA Tournament champion and was drafted by the Hawks with the 30th pick in the first round in the 2018 NBA Draft. He has played for the Hawks, Warriors, Timberwolves and Knicks during his career. However, after being cut by the NBA, Spelman chose to pan for gold overseas and joined the Korean league.
Recently, he was playing in the East Asian Super League, and in the last round, Spelman exploded and cut 53 points, 13 rebounds and 5 assists to help Anyang KGC beat his opponent by 55 points to qualify as the top of the group. It can be said that in this game, Spelman is simply a divine help, killing all sides in the offensive end, and no one can stop him.
It is undeniable that compared with the strong teams in Europe and the United States, Asian teams basically fight alone, and most of the time they rely on their individual ability to win. Even with the Chinese team, we rely on one or two players such as Zhou Qi to support the big picture. Imagine that once Spelman was naturalized by Lebanon, he won the bid and had unlimited firing rights. In the World Cup, he may not be able to make trouble for the Chinese team (can't run into it), but in the Asian competition, he may become a big rival of the Chinese team.