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
National team appearances in the FIBA Basketball World Cup 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 Basketball World Cup. A total of 58 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.