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
History of the FIBA Basketball World Cup continued to improve with both qualifying for the second group stage. After the 2002 FIBA World Championship ushered in a new era of parity, FIBA made the decision to expand the 2006 tournament to 24 teams for the first time since the failed expansion in 1986. In announcing the expansion, FIBA cited the "increased level of basketball around the world and the increasing number of competitive teams at the highest level." FIBA also removed the second group stage; instead, the top four teams in each group of six would move on to a 16-team, single-elimination knockout stage. The host and