FIBA Basketball World Cup qualification the 1994 FIBA World Championship in Canada. This setup continued until the 2002 FIBA World Championship in the USA which were also the Olympic champions; the supposed berth for the Olympic champions were instead given to Americas, the USA's home zone. In the 2006 FIBA World Championship in Japan that saw the field expand to 24 teams, with four invited teams popularly called as "wild cards" were invited by FIBA. This setup will last until 2014, when FIBA announced that they were renaming the competition as the "FIBA Basketball World Cup". In 2012, FIBA announced that the supposed 2018 world
2006 FIBA World Championship dominating from the beginning and limiting Greece to just 47 points, fewer than the Greeks had scored in any single game in the tournament, and less than half what Greece had scored against the USA in the semifinals. Spain won despite having lost power forward Pau Gasol, who was ultimately named the tournament's most valuable player, to injury in a semifinal match against Argentina. For the World Championship, FIBA selected 40 professional referees. • McDonald's 2006 FIBA World Championship The 2006 FIBA World Championship was the 15th FIBA World Championship, the international basketball world championship for men's teams. The tournament