2024 Paris Olympics basketball groups announced

A group draw was held on Tuesday for the 2024 Olympics in Paris, per Maggie Hendricks of Olympics.com. Eight teams have already secured spots in the 12-team tournament, while four others will need to advance via Olympic qualifying tournaments in early July. The Olympics will open in late July.

Each team’s world ranking is in parentheses (courtesy of FIBA.basketball).

Group A

• Australia (5)
• Canada (7)
• Winner of OQT in Spain: Spain (2), Finland (20), Poland (15), Bahamas (57), Lebanon (28), Angola (34)
• Winner of OQT in Greece: Greece (14), Slovenia (11), New Zealand (21), Croatia (30), Egypt (40), Dominican Republic (19)

Group B

• France (9)
• Germany (3)
• Japan (26)
• Winner of OQT in Latvia: Latvia (6), Georgia (23), Philippines (37), Brazil (12), Cameroon (68), Montenegro (17)

Group C

• United States (1)
• Serbia (4)
• South Sudan (33)
• Winner of OQT in Puerto Rico: Puerto Rico (16), Bahrain (67), Ivory Coast (31), Italy (13), Lithuania (10), Mexico (25)

Each team plays three games during the group stage (once versus every group opponent), and the top two finishers from each group — plus the two best third-place finishers — will qualify for the quarterfinals, per Donatas Urbonas of BasketNews.com.

As Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press writes, Team USA will be seeking its fifth consecutive Olympic gold medal in men’s basketball, but the Americans failed to medal at the 2019 and 2023 World Cups. Several marquee names have already committed to playing, but the roster has yet to be finalized or officially announced.

Serbia (Bogdan Bogdanovic, Nikola Jovic, more) won the silver medal at last summer’s World Cup without Nikola Jokic and could have the MVP front-runner on its roster at the Olympics. Germany (Dennis Schroder, Franz Wagner, more) went undefeated in winning the 2023 World Cup and will face host country France (Victor Wembanyama, Rudy Gobert, more), which won silver at the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, in Group B.

Group A should be extremely competitive. Australia (Patty Mills, Josh Giddey, more) claimed the bronze medal in Tokyo and Canada (Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, RJ Barrett, more) won bronze at the last World Cup. The two qualifying tournaments in that group will be interesting to monitor as well, with a handful of star players potentially suiting up for several different countries, most notably Luka Doncic (Slovenia) and Giannis Antetokounmpo (Greece).