A lot of controversy is surrounding FIBA-sanctioned tournaments these days. Complaints have been raised around the globe about the eligibility of certain players to play for a country’s national-team as FIBA officially allows only one naturalized player per team (The definition is, that a naturalized player has no family or ancestors in the particular the country and gained the citizenship and passport after his 16th birthday), so several countries tried to avoid critical questions and gave certain players completely new identities. Qatar is known to be a hotbed for African players to obtain a citizenship to play as Qatari under a new name for petro dollars in international and national competition.
So most if not all of the players in the national team are originally from Africa like Mustapha Al-Sayyad who is from the Sudan and played college basketball at Fresno State some years ago. Several African players were recruited over middlemen and some had to change their age in their African passports to be allowed to play as locals in the Qatari league (You are not being counted as an import if you are young enough) while the best of the players were chosen into the national-team which results in more money but also the loss of their previous name and their previous life.
Lebanon, Jordan and the Philippines are known to have big communities around the world (diaspora) were they are actively scouting for players that could help the respective national-teams, which leads from time to time (Usually before international competitions like the Asian Championships) to accusations and arguments weather a player is allowed to play or not.
Other Asian countries like Kazakhstan are pursuing players in Russia to move to Kazakhstan and are changing their age to make them eligible to play for their youth teams like it has been discovered recently by EuropeanProspects.com.
In Africa, Libya as a host of the African Championships 2009 and with a weak national-team in the past, changed its tactics and hired American coach Nickelberry and signed Alpha Bangura to play for the national-team and to help acquiring players to play for Libya in the African Championships.
Hiram Fuller, Randy Holcomb among others reported to play for petro dollars while their names being changed to Arabic names like it happened before in Qatar.
Rwanda, who is not known for being a country with a lot of basketball talent, has chosen the same way and pulled several Americans together to compete for the East African nation.
Matt Miller, Rob Thomson, Patrick Fields, Cameroun Bradley, Cedric Buzangu and Kami Kabange do not have anything to do with the country they are playing for. Fields even got a new name and passport while Cedric Buzangu played for the Democratic Republic of Congo in the African Championships-qualifiers in 2007.
In the CoCaBa Championships in Cancun, FIBA now stepped right in and banned Belize of playing with a team consisting of players born in the U.S. although all players do have Belizean citizenship according to the country’s premier minister.
A strange reaction to many, as players from Mexico, El Salvador and Panama were also born in the U.S. and are playing as full-fledged members in their national-teams. Belizean authorities filed a complaint which is now being revised by FIBA in Switzerland. The whole drama put the CoCaBa championships into a mess without any reliable news about the whole situation and its consequences. Protests have been filed by participating teams while it’s not known if the decision may come on the green table once the tournament is over.
The whole situation with “naturalization of a player” is getting out of FIBA’s hands.
With so much cheating going on around the globe (In Europe, the passport-fraud is also a hot topic), will FIBA allow all countries to recruit players to play for their national-teams or is it finally going to stick to it rules that it has set and ban nations that have frequently cheated from international competition?
Hopefully, Patrick Baumann and his trusted colleagues will find a solution for it soon, as a clear structure is needed to prevent more damage to the sport of basketball.
