Thoughts from the Diamond Ball

The Diamond Ball tourney wrapped up today, and my predictions were spot on 1-6, granted I made them when we were already halfway through the tournament. So here are just some exiting thoughts I have after the tournament.

China beat Iran this morning, 75-46. With this victory, they finish with the second highest margin of victory in the tournament (+8.7, compared to +9.3 for Argentina, and +6.7 for Serbia). They are also the only team to really throttle Iran, who put up a fight against Argentina (lost by 10), and upset Serbia. I thought Iran looked pretty solid during this tournament, but this win shows that if China has a good game, they might not be the Group B write-off everyone expects them. They have the potential for a big upset to come out of a group featuring USA, Spain, Germany, and Greece, similar to the one they had at Athens over Serbia to make the Top 8.

I don't buy Argentina as a potential upset for Team USA. Manu looks like he's still feeling his injury and we are only a week away from Beijing. In the preliminary round, Argentina allowed Iran to shoot 50% (China held them to 27%) from the field and outrebound them 28-26 (with 3 from Scola and Oberto combined). This morning, Scola and Manu dominated (32 and 24 points, respectively), but Australia still shot 50% and was only -4 in rebounds despite only 2 from Bogut. Team USA is managing 30+ point wins over teams like Turkey and Lithuania, while Argentina can only scrape by with a 10 point win over Iran, 15 Points against Serbia, and 4 points against Australia? If we think the US defense has holes, this one looks like it might be Swiss cheese.

Iran is if nothing else, a great rebounding team. I already mentioned that they pretty much eliminated the rebounding of Scola and Oberto, but they also held their own against the Great Wall of China in Yao, Yi and Wang, outrebounding the Chinese team, 39-33. To illustrate this, here are the total rebounding margins for each team in the tournament.

• Iran: +12
  
• Argentina: +4
  
• Serbia: -1
  
• Australia: -2
  
• China: -3
  
• Angola: -10

Iran was also the only team to have a postive rebounding margin in every game played, though it only helped them to a 1-3 record in the tournament.

A girl named Jeff interviews Yao

Here's the post-game interview after yesterday's China-Australia game in the Diamond Ball Tournament:



A couple notes:

Yao is sweating up a storm.

He seems to be exhibiting some strange form of optipessirealism, with the following quotes:

"Well, we lost the game, that's it."
--On what the game meant to China's preparation.

"Too much, but in the short term, we'll do our best."
--On what China's needs to improve on.

This must have been a fun game to watch

Australia beat China 67-55 in yesterday's Diamond Ball Tournament action to take over first-ish place in Group A. However, the real story wasn't that they won, but rather how they did it.

Let me throw a couple numbers your way.

Leading Scorers:
AUS: Anstley (11 pts)
CHN: Yao (14 pts)

Ok, so it was a low scoring game, no problem with that. Bogut is worth 12 million dollars a year, but can't even lead Australia in scoring? Yao leads the team, but the other players who were drafted/played an NBA team at any point (Yi, Sun Yue, Wang Zhizhi, Liu Wei) combined for a whopping 11 points.

Here's the curveball...

Leading Assists:
AUS: 3 tied (1 assist)
CHN: 4 tied (1 assist)

Nobody on either team got more than one assist, and they totaled 7 between them. In comparison, they combined for 38 turnovers, with Yao being the high man in that department with 5.

Jose Calderon is not amused.

Also, the Diamond Ball Tournament is kind of strange in that it consists of 2 groups of three, who play round robin style in the first round. After that, the top teams in each group play in the final to decide the champion, the second place teams in each group play for 3rd, and then the last place team play for 6th.

Because of this format, here is my projected order of finish:

1. Argentina
2. Australia
3. China
4. Iran (Upset Serbia today)
5. Serbia
6. Angola

The Olympic Dream

The second round of the FIBA Olympic Qualifying tournament is well underway now, with Croatia delivering a certified beating to Canada, knocking them out of contention. Just now, Slovenia lost to Puerto Rico, in a game where they kept it close until the lat 5 minutes of the game, during which Puerto Rico pulled away for an 11 point victory, who came in third place in the European tournament last year.

Greece steamrolled through the first round with an average margin of victory of 33.5 points, solidifying their spot as the odds-on favorite to win it all here. They have a relatively easy matchup here against New Zealand.

The other two wild card spots are likely to come from either Croatia, Brazil, Germany, or Puerto Rico. The only problem is that Brazil plays Germany today in a loser goes home scenario. Two good teams (including Slovenia) are going to make their exit.

I would say that Greece and Croatia are almost definite picks to make the top 3. Greece destroyed Brazil, beating them by 20 in the preliminary round, while Croatia beat Puerto Rico by 14. They both have the easiest path to the Finals of the teams, as they basically received a bye into the semis vs. New Zealand and Canada respectively.

I would expect Germany to defeat Brazil today behind strong performances by Dirk Nowitki and Chris Kaman, but they were untested in the first round, so I'm not sure how good this team actually is. Slovenia looked good in the first round two, beating Canada and Korea by an average of 14 points, but they fell down hard against Puerto Rico, who actually had a negative point spread in the first round due to their loss to Croatia.

In any case, Puerto Rico has already punched their ticket to at least the third place match, so they deserve to be in the conversation with their outstanding guard play behind NBA reserves JJ Barea and Carlos Arroyo.

[edit]Germany is laying the hurt on Brazil right now, leading 55-30 in the third quarter (low score). They might just sneak into the final if they can repeat this kind of defensive performance (holding Brazil to under 30% shooting) against Croatia.

Bracket:

Quarterfinals:

1. Croatia vs. Canada
2. Slovenia vs. Puerto Rico
3. Brazil vs. Germany
4. Greece vs. New Zealand

Semi-Finals:

5. Croatia vs. Winner of 3
6. Puerto Rico vs. Winner of 4

Finals:

7. Winner of 5 vs. Winner of 6

Consolation game (Third Place):

8. Loser of 5 vs. Loser of 6