Great Britain captain Drew Sullivan has called on basketball’s governing body, FIBA, to hand his team a wild-card entry into next year’s world championships in Turkey, in order to help his side to make an impact at the 2012 Olympic Games.
The failure of GB to advance past the first round of the European Championships wrecked their chances of automatic qualification. However FIBA sources in Poland confirmed that they will consider handing Britain a discretionary place when the 24-team entry list is finalised in December.
“From our standpoint, as a growing basketball team, we need to get as much experience as possible to get ready for 2012,” said Sullivan prior to the team’s departure from Warsaw. “We don’t want to go into the Olympics without being game ready and a place in Turkey would be a big help in that process. That’s why we went for a tough schedule in the lead-up to Eurobasket.
“We could have set it up to win more games than we did. Plus we didn’t have all our guys until the very end of the summer, without even talking about Luol Deng to come in once he’s fit again.”
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