MANILA (AFP) – Germany and Serbia have reached today’s Basketball World Cup final after years of playing together, while the United States’ (US) collection of NBA stars ran out of time to gel as a team.
Germany and Serbia will face off in Manila after knocking out the glamour names of the US and Canada in Friday’s semi-finals.
The Americans, who lost 113-111 to Germany, arrived in the Philippines with a team full of up-and-coming NBA talent who had been together for only a matter of weeks before the tournament.
The Germans, by contrast, had been steadily building after finishing third at last year’s EuroBasket tournament.
Franz Wagner, who scored 22 points against the US, said “it definitely helps playing together more times every summer”.
“For me, it’s just the second time, but for almost everybody else, they’ve been playing with the national team for multiple years,” he said.
“They’ve got years of experience at this level and of playing together too, so that helped us immensely.”
