KUALA LUMPUR (Mageshwaran's AsiaScope) - Continuing from where we stopped seven days ago, let's look at seven more happenings that marked 2014 in, and for, FIBA Asia.

8. Korean delight in Incheon
Korean basketball, nay sport, spent the whole year with their single-minded focus on doing well at the 2014 Asian Games in front of their home fans. They even sent a second-string women's team to the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women in Turkey. And all that proved well justified with the women as well as the men winning the gold medals - Korean men beating reigning FIBA Asia champions Iran in the Final as the icing on the cake.

9. Jordan open the WABA women's road
Jordan became pioneer of sorts in WABA women's basketball by hosting the region's first FIBA Asia event for women - the 22nd FIBA Asia U18 Championship for Women. The hosts team did play with a lot of pluck and poise and the defeats notwithstanding, Jordan have indeed shown promise to promote the women's sport in the near future.

10. Lankans catch eye
If hosting an event can boost the performance of a team, Sri Lanka's performance in Jordan was a testimony to that. Written off as minnows, Sri Lanka rode on the experience of hosting the 3rd FIBA Asia U16 Championship for Women a year earlier and caught the attention of the discerning with some effervescent basketball. 

11. Return of Fan Bin at helm of China's development program
Having taken quite a beating in reputation in recent times, China resorted to their age-old and time-tested master Fan Bin to return and take charge of their U18 national team. He was at his best and took China to their fourth successive title at the 23rd FIBA Asia U18 Championship in Doha, Qatar, but even more importantly showed a few new tricks in his training methods - especially on the defensive end of the floor.

12. The C in CBA is becoming more Chinese
Staying with China, and with the CBA to be more precise, the heartening factor in what is becoming the most popular - in all sense of the word - domestic league in FIBA Asia was that the Chinese youngsters are getting more playing time. The likes of Guo Ailun, Wang Zhelin, Zhang Bo and Zhou Qi are now part and parcel of their team's strategies and are certainly spending more time on the court.

13. Japan suspension
Things are not all that rosy across the ocean to China's east with Japan's administration striving hard to bring about progress in their approach. The Japanese Basketball Assoication is thus suspended, and all their teams barred from playing in any international competition. But given that Japan will host the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo, and their men's team has declined in its performance in recent international events, the suspension should serve to treat the ailments.

14. New Governance
FIBA Asia, like the rest of the FIBA family, is undergoing a change - welcome and positive at that - under FIBA's New Governance, aimed at preparing the National Member Federations to gear up for the refurbished and much busier competition calendar starting 2017. Winds of change are blowing all across the FIBA family and FIBA Asia is a part of this. The attempt is to take the sport to the next higher level, and only good can come out of this change.

Over the next two weeks, I will do my annual A-Z analysis of 2014 FIBA Asia.

So long… 

S Mageshwaran

FIBA Asia

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