Spain national team not very convincing in the rebuilding mode
The FIBA EuroBasket qualifiers arrived in the last round and we know 20 of the 24 teams that secured the qualification to this year’s continental tournament. There are some notable teams that failed to qualify like Croatia or Ukraine and world champions Germany could also mathematically still miss the qualification.
However this time we will look at another superpower in European basketball, Spain. Currently, they are still the reigning EuroBasket champions, winning the trophy in 2022 in Germany and they secured their spot for the 2025 EuroBasket so they have the chance to defend the trophy. But Spain doesn’t look like a team that will be considered among the favourites, especially after seeing Thursday’s performance when they lost to Latvia 83-66. Of course, Spain was already qualified and they did not bring their best roster for this qualifying window, as Willy and Juancho Hernangomez, Dario Brizuela, Alex Abrines, Lorenzo Brown, Jaime Pradilla, Usman Garuba, Juan Nunez or NBA player Santi Aldama were not called up.
Still, even with the full roster, this team seems to be in rebuilding mode. They are not at the level of the Golden generation of Spanish basketball (with the Gasol brothers, Juan Carlos Navarro, Jorge Garbajosa, Rudy Fernandez, and Ricky Rubio to just name a few) that dominated the continent and sometimes the world. They are still coached by Sergio Scariolo who is considered by many to be the GOAT of FIBA tournaments when it comes to coaches and they have huge potential when we look at their results in the youth category: they won gold at the 2022 U18 EuroBasket and silver at the U17 World Cup and U16 EuroBasket. In 2023 they won gold in every youth category (U19 World Cup, U18 EuroBasket, U16 EuroBasket) and last year they won silver with their U16 team at the EuroBasket.
Some of the young players (Hugo Gonzalez, Mario Saint-Supery, Rafael Villar, Izan Almansa) were already integrated into the senior team by Scariolo, and they showed they could already compete at this level. The Spanish national team is in a transition period, and it’s unlikely that they will surprise again like in 2022, when they won gold against all odds. But their future looks good, and they should compete for gold again in the coming years.
Imre Halasz
Photo credit: FIBA
