KUALA LUMPUR (Mageshwaran's AsiaScope) - The past few days have been truly heady in my sport writing career, blessed with a courtside view of the 2014 FIBA Basketball World Cup, privileged to watch some of the most intriguing and intense moments in what is turning out to be a true and absolute celebration - in all sense of the word - of basketball.

All three Asian teams bowed out at the Group Phase stage of the competition, but when I watch the teams that remained in fray and advanced to the Quarter-Finals, I reflect: "Asian teams have some real catching up to do."

I didn't expect any of them to last all the way to the final two days contending for a medal, but surely I didn't expect that none among the three would make it past the Group Phase.

Honestly, I'm quite disappointed in saying that, but I'm not embarrassed.

I'm convinced all three teams - Iran, the Philippines and Korea - did charm the crowds at Granada, Seville and Gran Canaria respectively but their charm fell seriously short when it came to winning the games.

Am I satisfied with what they did? I don't have an answer to that yet.

The discerning lot of international basketball is certainly impressed by the performance of each of these three teams, but was also left wondering at the uncertainty shown by the teams when the line between winning and not winning was rather thin.

Discovering, dissection and dissolving that thin line, quite invisible at this stage, should be the quest for the Asian teams over the next five years.

The new competition format that starts in 2017 to qualify teams for the 2019 FIBA Basketball World Cup is a great boon for Asian teams in this quest.

It all depends on how the teams debrief themselves about their trip to Spain 2014. It all depends on how honest and candid the teams are in the assessment of their performance. And it all depends on how straight and sincere the teams are in finding solutions.

All three teams can rest on the laurels of impressive performances. This is their right. But they also have a responsibility to figure out why they couldn't "continue" to impress, by just winning more games.

Having said that, none of the three teams need to be depressed either for not winning more games. At least they pushed their opponents to the brink, in most cases, before bowing out.

The "grey area" of success, therefore, lies somewhere in between those two paragraphs.

Something along the lines of "We impressed enough, yet we didn't win. We didn't win, yet we don't have to be depressed."

Conundrumatic Chicken-Egg situation? Absolutely!

Finding excuses for the failures will be very easy, but the point of discussion is to find the reasons for the losses. Celebrating what was "achieved" will be very convenient, but the need of the hour is to contemplate what "was not, and could have been, achieved".

To put it in simpler terms, the task for the teams is straight-forward: go back to the drawing board and start from scratch. At least this time the start is not from zero!

So long…

S Mageshwaran

FIBA Asia

FIBA's columnists write on a wide range of topics relating to basketball that are of interest to them. The opinions they express are their own and in no way reflect those of FIBA.

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