The U.S. men’s basketball team dropped out of the No. 1 spot in FIBA’s world rankings for the first time since 2010.
Spain displaced the U.S. by a slim margin in the latest rankings update thanks in large part to its EuroBasket title in September.
“It’s not exactly a new title and it probably can’t be maintained for too long, but it’s something so unique, prestigious and historic that I feel tremendously proud of everyone who … have contributed to it,” Spain coach Sergio Scariolo tweeted, according to an Associated Press translation.
FIBA rankings are calculated using all games played by 164 national teams in top official FIBA competitions and their qualifiers over an eight-year period. Added weight is given to more recent games, strength of opponent and strength of competition.
While the U.S. won its fourth consecutive Olympic title in Tokyo, it also lost in the quarterfinals of the 2019 World Cup (which Spain won) and placed third at the AmeriCup in September.
The U.S. did not have qualification for the 2023 World Cup or the 2024 Olympics at stake at the AmeriCup, a tournament for North and South American nations, and used mostly G League players and no NBA players.
Argentina was the last country other than the U.S. to be ranked No. 1, most recently in 2010. The Americans took the top spot back after winning the 2010 World Championship.
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No es propiamente un nuevo titulo y probablemente no pueda mantenerse durante demasiado tiempo, pero es algo tan unico, prestigioso e historico que me siento tremendamente orgulloso de tod@s l@s que, desde la U12 a la Absoluta, han contribuido a ello. #LaFamilia pic.twitter.com/pYPrgimea5
— Sergio Scariolo (@sergioscariolo) November 18, 2022
In a phone call with IOC President Thomas Bach, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that he expressed disappointment at the possibility of Russians and Belarusians returning to international competition as neutral athletes.
“Since February, 184 Ukrainian athletes have died as a result of Russia’s actions,” Zelenskyy said, according to a press release. “One cannot try to be neutral when the foundations of peaceful life are being destroyed and universal human values are being ignored.”
Russians and Belarusians were banned in February by most international sports federations, acting after an IOC recommendation after Russia invaded Ukraine. The IOC said then that a dilemma was created if Russians and Belarusians were still able to compete, while many Ukrainian athletes were prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country.
Bach recently added that, after the invasion and before the bans, some governments refused to issue visas for athletes from Russia and Belarus to compete, and other governments prohibited their athletes from competing against athletes from Russia and Belarus. That also led to the IOC’s recommendation.
“The participation in sport competitions was not based anymore on sports merits, but on purely political decisions,” Bach said last week. “So we had to act against our own values and our own mission, which is to unify the entire world in peaceful competition. We had, in fact, to protect this intricate integrity of the competitions.
“What we never did, and we never wanted to do, is prohibiting athletes from participating in sports only because of their passport.”
Bach and leaders in the Olympic movement have said since at least September that they are discussing how Russian and Belarusian athletes who do not endorse the war could return in the future.
Olympic leaders, including U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee board chair Susanne Lyons, have said this does not mean that they are advocating for the athletes to be allowed back into competition at this point.
Olympic leaders decided at a summit last week that if and when the athlete bans are lifted, they would return under “a stricter neutrality,” Lyons said, than occurred at past competitions when Russian athletes competed independently due to the nation’s doping sanctions. In those cases, Russians did not have their national flag or anthem but sometimes had national colors as “Olympic Athletes from Russia” or “Russian Olympic Committee” athletes.
“The sanctions are very specific,” Lyons said on Monday. “It can’t be the colors. it can’t be the name of the country.”
In his call with Bach, Zelenskyy also noted IOC support for Ukraine and called on the IOC to “contribute to the restoration of the sports infrastructure in Ukraine destroyed by Russia,” according to the release.
“The only fair response to such actions is complete isolation of the terrorist state on the international stage. In particular, this applies to international sports events,” according to the Ukraine president’s office release. “According to [Zelenskyy], the silence of athletes, coaches and officials condones aggression, and Russia uses sports for propaganda purposes.”
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Ryan Murphy added another backstroke title, while 42-year-old Nicholas Santos of Brazil ended his career by winning a fourth gold medal in the 50m butterfly at the world short course swimming championships in Melbourne, Australia.
Murphy, who swept the backstrokes at the 2016 Olympics, won the 100m back at short course worlds in 48.50 seconds, the second-fastest time in history in a 25-meter pool. Most major international meets, including the Olympics, are in 50-meter pools.
Murphy prevailed over a field that lacked Tokyo Olympic 100m back champion Yevgeny Rylov (banned along with all Russian swimmers for the war in Ukraine) and Italian Thomas Ceccon. Ceccon, who broke the world record in winning the world title in June (50-meter pool), is swimming other events at short course worlds.
In the hour before Wednesday’s 100m back final, Murphy led off a mixed-gender 4x50m medley relay that took gold, provided a drug-testing sample and attended a medal ceremony. He also told Swimswam that he was out of the water for the week of Thanksgiving with the flu.
Santos, a 50m butterfly specialist, said after winning a third consecutive title in the event that it was his last career race. Santos swam at the Olympics in 2008 and 2012, but the 50m fly is not on the Olympic program.
“I am getting old and leaving this to the young guys,” Santos said, according to World Aquatics.
American Torri Huske tied for gold in the women’s 50m fly with Maggie Mac Neil, the Olympic 100m fly champion from Canada.
Short course worlds run through Sunday.
The U.S. roster is headlined by individual Olympic gold medalists Murphy and Lilly King, plus Huske, who earned six medals June’s worlds in Budapest (50-meter pool), and Claire Curzan, who won five medals in Budapest.
Curzan tied for bronze in the women’s 100m back on Wednesday.
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