Is there a magic recipe that can improve Canadian basketball world ranking ? Ofcourse not.... but, there may be a path that could make a difference.
We don't have to have 300M+ population to be good; Lithuania has 2.7M and packs whooping 54 clubs (currently 3rd in the FIBA world rankings). This information alone should create mindshift. We probably didn't need the fancy chart to make a point, but visualizing could help emphasise the opportunity.
Some of you may wonder: How come, although Canada has considerable amount of players in NBA , we are 26th country in the world on FIBA ranking? You just have to put things in perspective of volume and simple numbers. If USA was to create 2 separate national teams from their pool of talent, they could probably be in the top 15 rankings regardless which team gets chosen to compete.
There are many ways to understand the Country's success in a given sport. One simple measure is how many folks are engaged in highly competitive environment?
If you focus on simple measure such as how many competitive teams there are in a given country you will not be surprised with results. Top 10 countries are perfectly coralated with their FIBA ranking based on how many PRO clubs they have enabled for their citizens to compete. USA has around 200 clubs competing competitively(not including 300+ NCAA organizations). Spain, the 2nd on the list has 136 clubs. Positioned as 9th on FIBA rankings Brazil has only 33 clubs (eurobasket.com).Germany and England would love for this simple formula to work in their favor, but it doesn't always work this way.
Country's average height, nation mentality towards basketball, government/business support, and few other factors are worthy categories that could be investigated. If we look at it from very simple metric: more organizations = more clubs=more leagues it should be simple enough to make a conclusion. More competing will increase available coaching/players pool talent, and eventually FIBA rating.
Do you agree that having less than a dozen clubs in Canada is not enough to push us in the top 10? What would be your "bridge" to top 10 FIBA rankings?
Learn more at PBACanada.ca and follow us @PBA2PRO.
