What Is Point System for Olympics Basketball? Explaining Group-Stage’s Complex Design

The 3-year wait for the Paris Olympics will be over in just a few hours. The world will be glued to the biggest sporting event ever created for a month or so. For hoop lovers, this year will provide something extra with the Avengers Team the USA has assembled. With fantasy link-ups coming to life, featuring LeBron James, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and more, the expectations are higher than ever. But how will their road to the Gold in Olympic basketball be decided, if that has to be the case? Let’s find out.

Paris Olympics basketball groups for men’s and women’s teams

The group split is straightforward. 12 teams are divided into 3 groups of 4. Each team will play the other once, totaling 3 games they’ll have to play in order to qualify for the quarter-finals. From each group, the top 2 teams will qualify directly, and the other two teams will be decided from the three 3rd placed teams. Now, without further ado, let’s take a quick look at the groups.

Men’s Groups

Women’s Groups

With groups and progression format out of the way, here’s the point calculation.

Point calculation in the Group phase

Rules are straightforward in the group phase of the Olympics basketball. Each win provides the teams with 2 classification points. A loss will yield 1 point only. In case a team forfeits the game, they will get 0 points and on top of that, the score will be 20-0 in favor of the winning team. This will come in handy during the progression to the quarterfinals. In case of a tie between the teams, head-to-head will be used as the tie-breaker to determine the top two qualifying teams.

According to Brian Windhorst, “Point differential is king,” which he made clear during the latest episode of The Hoop Collective. This cannot be any closer to the truth, as point differential will be the deciding factor for the third-best team selection. For example, let’s say Team USA has a point differential of 30, Serbia and South Sudan have a differential of 15 each with the same no. of points and Puerto Rico has a point differential of -10. So in this case, Team USA will progress as the top team from the group, with the winner of the game between Serbia and South Sudan qualifying as the 2nd team.

Now, among the three third-place teams, if South Sudan has the highest point differential with 15, followed by Japan with 8 and Greece with -11, then South Sudan and Japan will progress to the quarterfinals due to their superior point differential. So evidently, forfeiting a match will be detrimental and there shouldn’t be any reason to forfeit, anyway.

The NBA’s In-Season tournament used the same format, and FIBA rules will apply the same for tie-breakers in Olympic basketball. FIBA rules and violations are slightly different from the NBA rules, but after the string of preparations, the pro athletes will not have any difficulty with it during the Olympics. Lille’s Pierre Mauroy Stadium, home to soccer club LOSC Lille, will host all the group games. Paris’ Bercy Arena will host the knockout games from August 6. So with everything covered, we’ll just sit tight and let the action begin and bottle some memories to savor for the next 4 years.

To absorb more interesting stories, watch the Dual Threat Show hosted by BG12 where the prodigy puts Bulldogs star Silas Demary Jr under the pump with loaded NBA questions and more in this video below.