International basketball federation announces dates of FIBA Olympic pre-qualifying tournaments 2023

New Delhi [India], April 19 : International Basketball Federation on Wednesday announced the dates of FIBA Olympic pre-qualifying tournaments 2023 which is scheduled to be held between August 12 to 20 this year.

Forty teams, including India, will compete for Paris 2024 Olympics berth at the FIBA Olympic pre-qualifying tournament, as per Olympics.com.

FIBA will hold a meeting on April 28 and 29 to decide on the host for the event. The draw of the tournament will be on May 1.

There will be 12 teams in the fray in the men's basketball tournament at the Paris 2024 Olympics. While France has automatically qualified, seven teams will be decided at the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023. The Philippines, Japan and Indonesia will jointly host this event in August-September this year.

And the remaining four teams will get their qualification at the FIBA Olympic qualifying tournaments. There are two stages in the tournament where the first pre-qualifying stage will be played at a continental level and the second stage will be played at the global level.

The 40 teams which did not qualify for the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 will also be able to try their chance for the Paris 2024 qualification through this event.

India was one of the teams who had passed the first round of qualifiers to qualify for the second round of the FIBA Basketball World Cup 2023 Asian qualifiers. In the first round of qualifiers, India was in group A with New Zealand, the Philippines and South Korea.

The Indian men's basketball team in the first round of qualifiers had lost two games against New Zealand and the Philippines. However, after South Korea and some other teams withdrew due to COVID-19, they moved to second round.

In the second round, India failed to win single games and therefore did not qualify for World Cup.

Five teams from the 40 in the pre-qualifying tournaments will make it to the final Olympic qualifying tournament in 2024. The five nations will include one each from Asia, Africa and the Americas and two from Europe.