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A total of 56 countries have made or will make at least one appearance in the FIBA Basketball World Cup in basketball.
Contents
- Debut of teams
- Comprehensive team results
- Ranking of teams by number of appearances
- Performance of host nations
- Performance by confederation
- Number of teams by confederation
- References
African, European and teams from the Americas composed the first World Championship – Asian and Oceanian teams did not want to make a long trip to Argentina, the venue of the tournament. Egypt finished fifth in the inaugural world championship, the best finish by a team from Africa. An Asian team, the Philippines, made their debut on the second tournament, where they finished third, the best finish by an Asian team.
Australia was the first team from Oceania to participate in the tournament, in 1970. New Zealand was defeated in the 2002 bronze medal game, earning them a fourth-place finish – the best finish by a team from Oceania.
European and teams from the Americas dominated the tournament, with teams from either confederation disputing the gold medal. Since 1986, there have been three all-European and four Europe-Americas finals. The worst finish by a European team since 1963 was second; for a team from the Americas, the worst all-time was third.
The tournament formats prior to the 1978 tournament were two round robin phases – teams were first divided into several groups, with the top teams from the group stage qualifying for the Final Group, where they play each other once. The team with the best record after the Final Group wins the gold medal, with ties broken by games played between tied teams. All tournaments after the 1978 tournament determined the world champion via a playoff – in 1978 and 1982, the top two teams from the final group squared off for the championship; since 1986, a single-elimination tournament has been used.
The national team with the most wins is the USA, with four. Although teams bearing the name of "Yugoslavia" have won five titles, FIBA used to consider the championships to have been won by two separate national teams. The first three were won by the team that represented the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The other two were won by a team representing the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, which FIBA treats as the predecessor of the current Serbia national team. Furthermore, a Yugoslav team was able to finish at least third from 1963 to 2002. Recently, FIBA allotted all of Yugoslavia's wins to Serbia, while the team has yet to place third or higher by that name.
The USA is the current World Champion, winning the gold medal game against Serbia at the 2014 FIBA World Championship.
Debut of teams
A total of 56 national teams have appeared in at least one FIBA Basketball World Cup in the history of the tournament through the 2014 competition. Each successive Basketball World Cup has had at least one team appearing for the first time. Countries competing in their first Basketball World Cup are listed below by year.
With 56 national teams to have participated, the FIBA Basketball World Cup is the third most participated men's world championship, behind the FIFA World Cup (77) and the FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship (64), and ahead of the World Men's Handball Championship (48), the Rugby World Cup (25), the Cricket World Cup (20) and the World Baseball Classic (18).
Comprehensive team results
Notes:
Ranking of teams by number of appearances
Shown below are the sixteen national teams with the most appearances.
Performance of host nations
With only three wins in 16 occasions, the success rate of host nations winning the tournament is rather low at 19%, compared to the respective percentage in the FIFA World Cup which stands at 32% (6 out of 19). Yugoslavia was the last host to win, in 1970; the only other host to medal since then has been Turkey, silver medalist in 2010. Greece has been the only other host nation to finish fourth or better since 1970. From 1959 to 1982, the host qualified directly to the final round of the tournament, bypassing the preliminary round (group stage). The host's final rank in these years could not be worse than the number of teams in the final round (between six and eight). However, beginning in 1986, the host has competed in the preliminary round.
A "†" denotes that is the best performance of the team, a "‡" denotes it is the best performance of the team at the time of the competition.
*excluding classification rounds.
Performance by confederation
This is a summary of the best performances of each confederation in each tournament. Note that most confederations did not exist until up to the 1960s, and that FIBA assigned teams to a specific continent when there were no confederations yet.
Number of teams by confederation
This is a summary of the total number of participating teams by confederation in each tournament. Confederation of the host federation is boldfaced.